


When The Bough Breaks

by Fyre



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Forced Pregnancy, Found Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The infant was crying quietly.</p><p>The Winter Soldier was unsure what to do with it. It was not in her remit to handle small children, but this one was hers. They thought she was sleeping after the birth. They let her rest. That was unwise. She had taken both the opportunity and the child.</p><p>___________________________________________________________________________</p><p>Peggy Carter as The Winter Soldier AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1984

**Author's Note:**

> First there was [Avalanche](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1652261/chapters/3504041), an AU wherein Peggy Carter was the Winter Soldier.
> 
> Then, on a prompt, there was an alternate universe, where said [Winter Soldier had a child](http://amuseoffyre.tumblr.com/post/99474217795/i-havent-read-any-mysterious-pregnancy-trope-in-a).
> 
> Now there's this guy, spawned by another prompt and too delicious to ignore.

The infant was crying quietly.

The Winter Soldier was unsure what to do with it. It was not in her remit to handle small children, but this one was hers. They thought she was sleeping after the birth. They let her rest. That was unwise. She had taken both the opportunity and the child. There was blood on her hands from the ones who tried to stop her.

It was cold outside of the facility, and she knew the alarm would be raised soon. A weapon that was not controlled had to be contained. She tucked the swaddled child inside her coat, rocking her body stiffly, trying to calm it.

It.

Male or female, she did not know. She had not taken the time to check.

All she knew was that this little one was hers, and she was keeping it safe.

She searched the perimeter. She knew she knew this place, but the details were unclear. It was familiar, but not enough. The Winter Soldier took in the buildings, the locale. Perhaps she did not know it now, but she was adept. She would find a way out.

 

________________________________________

 

Her body had adapted for the child.

The infant latched onto her breast and fed. It was a strange sensation. The Winter Soldier watched it. Her. The baby was a girl. There was a band around one pink wrist marked with a name. Natalia. An appropriate name, for the date of her birth.

She was small, frail, pink. Her hair was wispy and red.

The Winter Soldier smoothed the blanket more snugly around her. 

They had shelter now. 

It was fortunate that certain memories were fixed. She knew where there were safe houses, so she knew where she could not go. A big city was a safer option, to lose one's self in the crowds, so she had made her way to the closest one. The owner of the apartment she acquired was bound and gagged in the bathtub. Death would have been simpler, but it the Winter Soldier only killed on command.

The Winter Soldier sat in front of the small fire on the thin hearth rug, a cup of bitter tea on the floor beside her. The child needed to be warm, she knew. Natalia. _Natalia_. The small, pink mewling creature that sucked at her breast and blinked large blue eyes and was hers.

They would come after her, she knew.

The Winter Soldier was expected to act on command. The Winter Soldier was not meant to take decisions or walk out of facilities in a hail of blood and bullets. The Winter Soldier, she thought darkly, was not meant to have a child. 

"You are mine," she told the baby. "They will not take you from me."

Natalia blinked drowsily. She was too small to understand, but the Winter Soldier meant every word.

 

_______________________________________________

 

They could not stay in one place long.

People were always on their guard for anything unusual. Neighbours would notice the cries of a child who was not meant to be there. The Winter Soldier kept Natalia as quiet as she could, and for the most part, Natalia was placid, especially when bound in a sling to the Winter Soldier’s chest.

It was strange how comfortable it was to carry her there. The warmth and weight of the baby against her body felt correct.

She hid her there when they moved on. 

Sometimes, they went on foot if the weather was clear. 

Sometimes, she took a vehicle, but she tried to do that as little as possible. 

Vehicles drew attention. Attention drew the authorities. The authorities would refer her to her handlers. Natalia would be taken back to the facility. The Winter Soldier could not - would not - permit that.

The country was a nest of vipers. She could see the regime was rotting. Everyone was looking out only for themselves, claiming what they thought was theirs. Shelves were bare. People were starving. Those who had anything had it all, and those without were desperate.

She knew little of the time she was in, or the place, but piece by piece, she was remembering how to keep herself hidden, how to watch, how to learn, how to blend in and say the right things to the right people.

To save the child, she did what she had to, to keep them hidden.

She stole. She killed. She demeaned herself.

Anything that got her a step further away from facilities.

The winter was bitter and hard, but little by little, she got closer and closer to the border. 

The night they crossed into Finland, Natalia was wrapped in blankets lined with heated rocks, and fast asleep. The Winter Soldier’s body was numb with cold and fatigue, but she dared not stop. The snow was deep, thick, and the snowshoes she had fashioned broke apart after fifty miles.

She could not be sure when she crossed the border.

She could not be sure when she was safe.

She just walked and walked until she saw a farmhouse, the distant light of a lantern hung by the front door. The snow was up to her knees, and she was dragging furrows into it as she stumbled closer and closer.

Natalia needed to be warm. It was too cold for such a little one.

She had no strength left to lift her arm when she reached the door. She sank to her knees on the step and fell forward, her shoulder crashing against the wood. The motion roused Natalia for the first time in hours, and she gave a shrill cry.

The door was opened, and the warmth that spilled out made the Winter Soldier hiss in pain. Too warm after such cold. She wrapped her numb arms around Natalia before her body shut down to rest.

 

____________________________________________

 

She didn’t immediately know what woke her. She was lying in a make-shift bed close to the warmth of the stove, her limbs still aching with the cold. The absence of Natalia made her scramble upright, and her head swam. 

A woman was sitting in a rocking chair, staring at her, startled. Natalia was crying quietly.

The Winter Soldier staggered across the floor, snatching the child back. 

Hers. 

Natalia was hers.

She folded back to her knees, Natalia wailing in fright, and held the baby close to her. She didn’t recall what she said, only whispering endearments over and over in all the languages she could recall, trying to calm the child. Myshka. Sweetheart. Schatz.

Natalia continued to cry, and the woman from the rocking chair approached cautiously. She said something the Winter Soldier didn’t understand, gestured to the chair.

Clumsily, the Winter Soldier rose and sat. The woman wrapped a blanket around them both, and the Winter Soldier remembered. The child would be hungry. With her left hand, she opened her shirt and set Natalia to feed.

The woman was staring at her hand.

The Winter Soldier ignored her, her eyes on Natalia, until the baby was fed and sleeping again.

Only then did she look at her hosts.

The Winter Soldier spoke rudimentary Finnish, and the family broken Russian. They - a middle-aged man, his younger wife, and their two teenager children - assured her she and her child were not in any danger. No one would have followed.

They wanted to know who she was.

Margarita, she said. The name felt correct. She gave no patronymic.

They fed her warm food, let her stay for several days, and when the husband set out to the nearest town, the Winter Soldier took her child and went with him. 

From there, it became easier. 

One large town led to another, larger still, and another.

She changed her appearance as much as she could without being obvious. Her hair became golden and curled in a tousled mane around her face. She adapted the make-up to make herself look fresh-faced, making her eyes look larger with vivid shades of colour that seemed popular with young women.

The Winter Soldier did not know who she had been before, but she could recall allies. It was a vague shape of a memory, not sharp, but enough for her to know she had people to find. A man in America. She had been sent to find him before. Barnes. His name was Barnes. He was affiliated with a man called Stark.

With enough carefully distributed information to the eyes and ears of the people in power, she bartered herself a passport. They gave her a false name and a false identity. They gave her funds enough to reach America safely.

In the plane, she opened her coat and released Natalia from the confines of it. The child was cooing happily over a small, colourful ball. 

The Winter Soldier stroked her hair gently.

They were safe now, away from that land and the people who would harm them.

 

________________________________________________

 

She did not expect it to be easy to find Barnes or his associate.

On missions, she was fully briefed before departure, but this time, she had no brief, no point of contact, no target, no support. All she had were two names.

By the time her plane came in to land in New York, she had a basic plan in place. Her first priority was the welfare of her child. She took a yellow cab into the city, found a hotel that was neither too high class or too low class, and registered under the name on her passport.

No one gave her a second look.

In the hotel, she found a call box with a directory.

It was a crude way to find information, but she scanned through page after page of names. 

Barnes was nowhere to be found, but Stark - if it was the correct one - had a full-spread page, advertising not only his New York branch, but departments in Washington, Los Angeles, and half a dozen other states.

The Winter Soldier tore the page from the book, and set out into the streets, Natalia in a sling at her chest.

A cab ride took her as far as the Stark building in Manhattan. It was a towering building, all glass and chrome, the most modern building on the block. The logo was unfamiliar, but the name was just on the edge of her senses. Something about it was much more familiar than Barnes. It brought to mind technology, a scientific laboratory, and a roguish grin.

The lobby was bright and shining.

Designed to impress and intimidate, she realised.

She was neither impressed nor intimidated.

She went to the reception desk, where a woman in a suit with broad shoulders was sitting. It took several minutes for the woman to look up from her work.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr Stark.”

The secretary’s eyebrows rose. “Do you have an appointment?”

The Winter Soldier had loosened her coat around Natalia, and she saw the way the woman’s eyes fastened on the baby, and the panic on her face. Useful, then. “No,” she said, “but I think you can see that it’s a sensitive matter.”

In a matter of minutes, she was led deeper into the building into a waiting room. It was grand with plush seats, and warmed to a bearable temperature. The Winter Soldier removed her coat entirely under the secretary’s wary eyes, and lifted Natalia from her sling.

“Girl or boy?”

The Winter Soldier looked at her. “Do you think that’s any of your business?” she said crisply.

The secretary flushed. “Someone will be with you soon,” she said.

They tried several distractions: a lawyer trying to pry answers from her, a doctor requesting a DNA sample, even someone who professed they would look after the baby while the Winter Soldier spoke to Stark. Each of them was met with a cold, blank look.

“I came here to see Mr Stark,” she said each time. “I don’t intend to leave until then.” She turned her mouth up at the sides. “I don’t think it would do his company any good to have a woman and child dragged off the premises.”

“Mr Stark is currently on the west coast.”

She kept smiling that small, quiet smile. “Then he should come here. It’s very important.”

They kept her waiting.

Stark, it seemed, was coming.

They brought her food, which she ate sparingly, and she waited. Even after the building started to empty, she waited. 

It was dark outside, and Natalia was fretting against her shoulder, when the door of the room finally opened.

She looked up to see a thin-faced man in a suit. He looked around seventy years of age, but spry with it. His hair was grey, and he had a toothbrush moustache beneath a sharp nose and bright, dark eyes. His suit was tailor-made to look good, but effortlessly. It was a casual use of wealth that told her who she was looking at.

She rose. “Mr Stark.”

The man’s eyes were wide, and the colour was draining from his features. She knew those symptoms. He was shocked, and the quickening of his breath told her he was afraid. “Carter?” he said in a hoarse voice.

 

___________________________________________

 

Stark claimed to be a friend.

He offered them sanctuary and shelter. The Winter Soldier accepted. Any enemy of her enemy was a friend of hers. She followed him through the building and down into the parking complex. A car was waiting. It had blacked-out windows.

She hesitated, assessing the risk.

She didn’t know this Stark, but he claimed to know her.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“My house,” he replied. “It’s some way out of the city. More privacy for you. We can talk there. There are ears everywhere here.”

The Winter Soldier collated what little data she had, then nodded, slipping down into the car. Natalia was still awake, but was making no sound.

Stark slid into the car beside her, nodding to the driver.

The Winter Soldier was silent. A precaution. He spoke of ears everywhere and until he indicated it was safe to speak, she would not.

“What do I call you?” Stark said.

The Winter Soldier wasn’t looking at him when he spoke, but when she did look, he was looking at Natalia. “Me?” she asked. “Or her?”

He raised his eyes to her, and she could see distress in his features. “You don’t have a name?”

“It was not relevant.”

“God,” he said quietly.

She shifted Natalia when the child started to cry. “You called me Carter,” she said. 

He nodded slowly. He looked older than he had when he walked into the room. “If I’m right, she’s you. Or you’re her.” He shook his head. “I don’t have any answers right now, but I want to know if you are her, and if you’re not, how the hell you look just like her.” He met her eyes. “If I’m right, you should be the same age as me. How the hell do you still look like that?”

The Winter Soldier remembered the cold, being forced to step back into the cold, knowing the silence and darkness that would come with it.

“There was a unit,” she said. “It was cold. I was closed in.”

“Impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “No one has been able to successfully…” He looked at her. “No one we knew of. Jesus Christ.”

The Winter Soldier unwrapped Natalia, who was shifting fretfully. “My handlers were not pleased when I chose to leave their custody,” she said. “This country should be safe.”

“Handlers,” he echoed. “Where the hell have you been?”

She shook her head. Too many questions she was not programmed or permitted to answer. “I brought her,” she said, laying her hand on Natalia’s chest, stroking gently to soothe her. The hum of the metal hand always calmed her more than the press of the flesh one. “She must be safe.”

The old man was quiet as they drove on through the city.

When he spoke again, it was carefully. “How did you know to come to me?”

The Winter Soldier frowned.

A mission.

There was a mission centred on Barnes.

“You are affiliated with a man who was my target,” she replied. “You are the enemy of the ones who would have taken the child from me. You are the least likely to return me to them.”

He looked confused. “Affiliated with your target?” he asked. “Who? What target?”

Her eyes closed, only for a moment, as she searched her memories. “James Buchanan Barnes,” she stated. “Location: New York city. No direct contact. Ensure visibility only.”

Stark looked ill. “My god,” he said under his breath. “He wasn’t imagining things.”

The Winter Soldier returned her attention to Natalia, picking her up and cradling her against her flesh shoulder. “You are enemies of my enemy,” she said quietly. “That makes you my friends.”

 

___________________________________

 

Stark’s house was opulent.

That wasn’t a surprise.

He let her select her own room, which seemed an unnecessary courtesy. There were many, and the one she chose was the most defensible of them all, with limited access points, and secure windows. Good for escaping or defending. 

Except, of course, they had locks that could be sealed by technology to keep her in.

She laid Natalia down on the bed, giving her the small coloured ball she liked so much.

“What do you need to do?” she asked, straightening up. “You want to validate my identity.”

Stark was watching her with a strange expression. “A blood test,” he said. “A few drops of blood should be enough. We hold Carter’s DNA on record, as part of SSR protocol. If it’s a match, we could know in a couple of days.”

“Until then,” she said, “you will lock me in.”

He looked pained. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

The Winter Soldier inclined her head, grateful that he hadn’t tried to fob off her observation. “You have brought an unidentified person into your home who has stated they were in the employ of your enemies. If you let me walk free, I would consider it foolish.”

“Food’ll be provided,” he said, “and I’ll have the crib brought up.”

She looked at him. “You have a crib?”

One side of his mouth turned up. “And a wife and child,” he said. “No need to act so surprised.”

The Winter Soldier was not aware that she had. “Thank you,” she said. She turned her back on him, a measure of the trust she was showing him, and sat back down beside Natalia. “She may need a change of clothes.”

“I’ll have one of the maids fetch some things from the attic for her.”

The Winter Soldier watched Natalia grasping at her finger. “You have a daughter too?”

“A son,” he said. “Tony. You won’t meet him.”

“Wise,” she murmured. “The children must be protected.”

He was quiet, but he didn’t walk away. She could hear his breathing. A smoker’s wheeze, though she could tell from sitting near him that he’d quit some time before. He was watching her and Natalia.

“Who were her parents?”

The Winter Soldier laid her metal hand on Natalia’s belly again. The baby batted at it, tugging at two fingers. “She’s mine,” she said. It was as simple as that.

“And the father?”

The Winter Soldier blinked slowly.

Yes.

A father.

There would be a father.

“It was not relevant for me to know,” she said. She looked up at him. “Do you want blood tonight?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “The sooner we get the tests started, the sooner we’ll know.”

She looked down at Natalia, then nodded. 

 

___________________________________________

 

She was Agent Margaret Carter.

The blood test was conclusive, and Stark was the one to tell her.

The Winter Soldier looked blankly at him when he said the name. If she had a name, she thought she would have recognised it, but he could have drawn the name from thin air, and she wouldn’t have known the difference. 

Stark didn’t press her for information. He must have realised there was a limit to what she could tell him. Instead, he provided her with intelligence he deemed relevant. He brought out files for her to read pertaining to Agent Margaret Carter, and her role in the agency called the SSR. 

He left her to glut on the documents. Among the first pages, there was a picture of a woman she recognised as herself, alongside an older man - she remembered the scent of tobacco and aftershave - and a smirking young man who had to be Stark.

The documents were filled with records of action in war, both on the battlefield and under cover infiltration. It seemed that the Winter Soldier had not been helpless before she came to her handlers. Once a soldier, she thought, forever a soldier. 

The folders were in chronological order, from the earliest days of the SSR until the alleged ‘death’ of Margaret Carter while on a mission.

From what she could see in the files, Agent Carter was not a field agent by that point, and yet, for some unknown reason, she had been part of a mission to apprehend a scientist by the name of Arnim Zola. According to eye-witnesses, she fell from a precipice after saving the life of her commanding officer, and was presumed dead.

The Winter Soldier shivered, closing the file over.

Ever since she had escaped, she had slept without cold and darkness. Sometimes, there were dreams. Sometimes, she was falling in them. When she was falling, there was a man reaching out his hand. His face was indistinct, but he wanted to help her.

There were more files, thicker ones, marked “Project Rebirth”. It had been mentioned in the records about Margaret Carter, but she felt tired, drawn out. It was if there was an open space in her memory, and she had tried to fill it with information, but it was not quite sinking in.

Natalia - bouncing in a small chair on the floor - beamed at her.

The Winter Soldier knelt and scooped her up.

She carried Natalia to the bathroom, and set the water running, filling the tub until it was deep enough for her to lie on her back with Natalia on her chest. It was warm enough, though not too warm for the little one, and she hummed a lullaby softly, as Natalia nestled against her, small feet kicking at the water.

The words of the lullaby were like wisps of smoke, slipping between her fingers. Reading the files was difficult, but knowing a melody without knowing why, and forgetting the words her mother must have given her, was so much worse. 

She was shivering and whispering in a confused mix of languages, but Natalia didn’t know any better. When the Winter Soldier sat up in the tub, cradling her, and hot tears rained down on Natalia’s head, the baby didn’t know any better.

The Winter Soldier pressed her lips to her daughter’s hair. 

“They won’t take you,” she promised. “They won’t do to you what they have done to me. I promise.”

 

_______________________________________________

 

The Winter Soldier slept badly, woken by nightmares of faceless people who she knew, but couldn’t identify. She woke with a gasping cry, the sheets ripped beneath her metal arm. Natalia slept on silently. 

A good baby, the Winter Soldier thought. So quiet.

Another thought came hard upon it: too quiet.

She could barely sleep again. Instead, she sat beside the crib, watching Natalia. Too quiet, she thought. Much too quiet. Babies were meant to cry and squall. Natalia only ever did that - and softly - when she was in distress. For so many days, she had been grateful for the quiet, as they made their escape, but now, it felt wrong.

By the time the baby woke, the Winter Soldier had been pacing the floor and checking the crib for hours. She lifted Natalia up and went to the door, beating on it with her right hand, until Stark finally opened it for her. He was unshaven, his hair dishevelled, as if he had just been woken. 

“I think they did something to her,” she said without waiting for a greeting. “The child. My child.”

Stark looked down at Natalia. “What kind of thing?”

“She doesn’t cry,” the Winter Soldier said. “I remember now. Babies are meant to cry.”

Stark looked at her, then down at the baby. “You’ve been pretty quiet yourself,” he said. “Maybe it’s carrying over.”

She looked at him blankly. “I know I am corrupted,” she said. “I need to know she isn’t.”

He flinched at her words. “You’re not corrupted,” he said. “Carter, you were abducted and whatever they did, it messed with your brain, but you’re not corrupted. You broke out to save a child. That’s not something a corrupted person does.”

She stared blankly at him. “I need to know, Howard,” she said.

His expression showed surprise, but he nodded. “We may need to do blood tests on her, and scan her for abnormalities,” he said. “Will you be able to let us do that?”

The Winter Soldier looked down at Natalia. “I need to know,” she said again.

It was the worst kind of torture, holding Natalia while they broke her soft, fragile skin with needles. Natalia cried then, flailing her small limbs, and the Winter Soldier held her close, crooning, to calm her.

Stark was beside her too, and to her surprise, he put his hand on the Winter Soldier’s shivering shoulder.

“She’ll be fine, Carter,” he said softly. “We’ll test everything, see what we can find, but from what I can see, she’s a good, healthy girl.”

The Winter Soldier nodded. Her throat felt tight, and her eyes felt wet. “Thank you,” she whispered, cradling Natalia’s head gently in her palm, her thumb smoothing the tousled red curls. 

Was it weakness, she wondered, to fear so much for such a small, insignificant thing?

The Winter Soldier was not meant to feel nor care nor think.

Carter, he called her. Carter, her blood identified her.

Margaret Carter.

Margaret Carter could care and feel and think.

A step away from the handlers was a step away from the Soldier too.

She took a shaking breath, and looked down at Natalia. 

Natalia Carter, daughter of Margaret Carter. 

Not just a name on a bracelet.

She would be Natalia Carter now.

 

_____________________________________

 

Stark brought the results the next day.

There was a chemical, he said, in the Winter Soldier’s bloodstream. It looked like it was being regulated somehow, possibly through her mechanical arm. It kept her - and Natalia in turn - docile. 

He wanted to open up her arm, find out what it was. 

Carter didn’t argue.

If it was for the good of Natalia, she would have hacked the thing off at the shoulder.

He wanted to sedate her, but Carter said no. Carter wanted to be conscious at all times. She had been put in the cold and the black before. Carter would not leave her child behind for the quiet of the cold and the black. 

Barefoot, she followed him deeper into the house, Natalia murmuring in her arms.

The place was a maze, but her memory for locations had always been strong.

If need be, she could find her way through the halls and out the front or back door without any effort. It was simply a matter of mapping the route in her head.

That was easily done, until he opened a door in front of them.

He had a laboratory.

It made her stop dead, her blood rushing in her ears. 

Unlike her handlers, this one was open and bright, and there were windows all along one wall, allowing ambient daylight in. There were no machines waiting to claim her. There was no chair. Gorge rose in her throat. The chair. She remembered the chair.

“Carter?” Stark prompted.

“They used a chair,” she said, staring blankly at him. “It had a panel that went around my head. I remember it hurt. It made things… more focussed.”

Stark paled. “I’ve heard rumours,” he admitted, “but no one thought anyone would actually use it.” 

“Can you undo what it did?”

He shook his head. “Unless I could get a hold of it, I couldn’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded. That was the anticipated response. 

“My arm,” she said.

“That, I can try and help you with,” he said, leading her over to a bed. The back was propped at an angle that left her sitting up, so she could keep holding onto Natalia, and she watched him as he started removing plates on her arm.

“Why are you doing it yourself?” she said. “Don’t you have assistants?”

He met her eyes. “There’s no one I would trust with this,” he said. “Right now, you’re my little secret, Carter. Until we can figure out what’s going on, I want to keep it that way. Call it a security precaution.”

Protecting her and Natalia, but also his own people.

If he had misjudged her, he would be the only collateral. 

A wise decision.

As he opened up parts of the arm, electric shocks shot through her. They were painful, but she had dealt with far worse. It was nothing compared to the searing blaze of pain that tore through her when he located the source of the chemical.

When the blackness drew back from her senses, she realised her arms were empty before she opened her eyes, and would have lunged upright if Stark hadn’t set Natalia back in her embrace. The warm, familiar weight made her breath escape in a sharp gasp.

“I thought it was better for me to hold her when you passed out,” Stark said, when she opened her eyes, still trembling. 

She nodded mutely, breathing hard. Natalia was complaining quietly, but settled against her chest, and her presence was more calming than it had any right to be.

“I found what we were looking for,” Stark said, when she was breathing steadily again. He held out a tray, showing a small metal cylinder that looked almost like a battery. She looked at it, then up at him inquiringly. “They were controlling your blood chemistry,” he explained. “Now that we’ve removed it, it should clear in a few days, but to be on the safe side, we should get the kid onto formula until we know it’s out of your system.”

She sat up, swinging her legs down from the bed. “What will it mean?” she asked. “Now that it’s gone?”

Stark set the tray aside. “You won’t be sleep-walking your way through life,” he said. “I’m amazed you managed to override it to get out. They’ve been suppressing your emotions so much, you shouldn’t have even cared enough to try and escape.”

Carter looked down at Natalia. “I had a good reason,” she said quietly. 

Stark touched her shoulder. “Maybe that’s why they implanted it,” he said. “To keep you from getting attached.”

She almost smiled. “I think they underestimated me,” she said.

Stark’s smile creased his face. “They wouldn’t be the first.” He helped her down from the bed. “Let’s get you back to your room. You may need the rest. I don’t think the next few days are going to be easy.”

 

_________________________________________

 

He wasn’t wrong.

Natalia was still a fairly quiet baby, but she no longer slept as steadily, and when she woke, her cries were sharp and piercing.

On Carter’s part, she could barely sleep anymore. Nightmares came thick and fast, faces and flickers of memories. She re-read the files now, with the scales stripped from her eyes, and forced herself to concentrate on every word.

She wept more than once, the emotions overwhelming her, where they had been stifled before. When she did, Natalia grew distressed in turn. More often than not, by late afternoon, she would be curled on her bed, Natalia tucked in front of her, trying to calm herself. 

It wasn’t that she was upset. 

Far from it. 

She was angry. Angry at how she had been used. Angry that she had been turned into a weapon and a vessel. Angry that she could not remember it. Angry that she hadn’t killed more of them on the way out. 

Stark left the doors open now. Ironic, she thought, that she was locked in when placid, but now, when furious, she was given free rein. She took advantage of the fact to make her way through the house and down to a small gymnasium.

There was a bouncing chair there too.

Stark, it seemed, had thought of everything.

Carter set the baby in the chair, then turned her attention to the equipment.

In no time at all, she had beaten a punch bag to shreds while Natalia giggled and kicked at her feet. She was barely even breathing hard, and her heart was pounding, sending the blood surging through her.

She hooked up another punch bag and set to work on that, even when she heard footsteps approaching in the hall.

“I thought I might find you here,” Stark said.

She nodded, wiping her brow with her forearm. “I needed to hit something,” she said. She turned around to face him. “It’s clearing. I can tell.”

He nodded. “You’re looking more like yourself,” he said. “Anything coming back?”

“I know I’m Margaret Carter,” she said through clenched teeth. “I _know_ I am. All the evidence says I am. But I don’t remember any of it. It’s all words on a page.” She started untaping her hands, frowning at her metal fist. “And this. Where did I get this? Was this before? Was it them?”

Stark looked at her hand, then back at her face. “That was them,” he said quietly. “Last time we saw you, you were in one piece.”

Something about his intonation made her frown, raising her eyes to him. “We?”

Stark was silent for a moment. “There’s someone I think you need to see,” he said.

 

___________________________________________________

 

‘Someone’ was a man she recognised.

He was her target, her last mission, before things became blurred and uncertain. Some time after her last mission, but before Natalia’s birth, they had placed the implant in her arm. They hadn’t wiped her. She knew his face.

Stark called him to the house, and when he arrived, when he walked into the room, he stopped dead, staring at her.

“Howard,” he began, backing up.

Stark was at his side, his hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s all right, James,” he said. “It’s real this time. She’s real.”

Carter stared across the room at James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant, her memory supplied. Sergeant Barnes. He was meant to be the same age as Stark, according to the records she had read, but the man in front of her didn’t even look middle-aged.

“Carter?” he said. “You’re alive?”

“Apparently,” she replied, staring at him. 

There were more lines on his face and more grey in his hair, but he hadn’t changed. She could recall his hand on her arm, his voice in her ear, asking for a favour in the passage at the bunker. To go where he could not. To protect what he could not. 

She blinked, startled, at the flicker of memories, like an old flipbook. 

“I protected him, Sergeant,” she said. “The Captain, as we agreed.”

Barnes went a shade paler. 

“What is it?” Stark asked, worried. 

“I remembered,” Carter said, her eyes still on Barnes. “I remembered the last time we met.”

“Carter…” Barnes whispered. “God, Carter, I’m sorry.” He looked at her metal arm, at the baby in her lap, then back at her face. “What happened to you?”

She had to look at Natalia to keep the emotions at bay. “Unpleasant things,” she said. She looked back up at him. “Much like your experience in HYDRA’s hands.”

Barnes walked across the room, stiff-legged, and sat down slowly on the couch beside her, staring at her as if he couldn’t believe she was real. He hesitated, then held out a hand. “Can I?” She nodded and his fingers brushed her arm. “Shit,” he breathed.

“Quite,” she agreed quietly. 

“Carter’s having trouble with her memories,” Stark murmured from the doorway. “We knew her before all this. I figured we might be able to stir up some memories.”

“Looks like you were right,” Barnes said. He lowered his eyes to look at Natalia, who was chewing on a spoon. “Who’s this?”

Carter looked down too. “This is Natalia,” she said. “She’s the reason I got out.”

Barnes’ eyes met hers. “Always has to be some little runt of a kid that makes us do stupid shit, doesn’t it?” he said. “I know I had one of those.”

She remembered another man, another place, another time. A friend of Barnes. Small and fair and she remembered his face in the records. More importantly, she remembered his smile which wasn’t in the records, before science took him and made him into something else.

“Steve,” she whispered, wondering how they could ever have ripped him from her memories. “The Captain. That was Steve.”

Barnes’ smile was bittersweet. “That’s our guy,” he said. 

She looked from Barnes to Stark and back. “Did he survive? Was he all right? I didn’t finish the files. I didn’t see what happened.”

“No.” Barnes’ voice had gone flat. “He died.”

The rush of joy at the memory felt like it had died in an instant. “Died?”

Stark approached, sitting down on one of the vacant seats. “HYDRA launched an attack on New York. Captain Rogers managed to infiltrate their ship. He defeated the Red Skull, but he went down with the ship to keep it from making land.”

Peggy stared at him.

“Of course he did,” she said, her voice as steady as she could make it. “He always was a stubborn idiot.”

Natalia reached up from her lap and patted her mother’s wet cheek.


	2. 1991

Howard Stark died three days after Natasha’s seventh birthday.

Carter knew she should have been there. Carter - the Soldier - would have been more alert on the road than James was. She knew she would have seen the ice. She had been trained in Russia after all. James had no chance. He was a city driver, fifty years out of combat. 

Instead she - Peggy - had chosen to be with her daughter, although she did concede to staying at the Stark residence until the Stark parents and James returned.

Sometimes, she still played bodyguard.

Seven years since her escape, and people still came after her. 

Not just her, either. 

Howard was her guardian angel. He kept them sheltered and provided for, and in turn, she protected him and his. 

Only this time, the one time she was needed, she wasn’t there.

It wasn’t something she wanted to feel guilty about, but it wasn’t an emotion that could easily be stifled. She nodded and listened to the police officer, then quietly insisted on being the one to tell Tony. 

The boy was like his father in many ways. They both had the same drive, the same need to create, but where Howard only played the showman in public, Tony tried to maintain the pretence as much as he could all the time. 

Father and son weren’t close.

Peggy could remember being in that situation herself, parents leaving her in the care of a fleet of nannies and governesses. It was the done thing, and there was a world to put together again after the first great war. One didn’t expect more.

With Tony, it was different.

Howard loved him, that much she knew, but Howard’s drive always had been his work. His wife, Maria, who died in the car along with him had only crossed his path when she was working with him. She had proven herself equally focussed, something that had earned Howard’s devotion. Even when their child came along, Howard and Maria’s focus was and remained their work.

Tony had every comfort, but like Peggy, saw little of his parents.

He was fourteen when Peggy first met him, a stubborn, jaw-jutting teenager, who refused to believe anything was impossible or that there were any rules he had to abide by. She only caught his interest when she removed her mauve cardigan and revealed her cybernetic arm. 

From that moment, he had been fascinated. 

It took him another two years - and James’ constant insistence - before he called her aunt Peggy. Once the dam was breached, however, she was aunt Peggy at all times. More often than not, she would find him sprawled on the couch on a Saturday morning with Natasha, watching cartoons. 

James should have been the one to tell him, but James was in no state to see anyone.

Peggy pushed all emotions down. There was time for grief later. The Soldier could hold her head up now, say the words that needed to be said, and grieve when it was done.

It was early, and even with the illumination across the city, it was still dark outside.

The elevator hummed as she returned to the penthouse level. 

The apartment there was big enough to house a family of fifteen, but more often than not, it was only James and Tony. Howard preferred his base in Washington, where he had his facilities. He had bought the building and renovated it as a gift for his son. Tony only stayed there because James did, and he would have walked through fire for James.

On occasions when she was playing bodyguard, Peggy would also bring Natasha. 

The pet name came early, when Natalia was still crawling. Sometimes, she was even just Tasha. In the safety and protection of their small circle, she had become Natasha to everyone, and as she grew, Natalia fell by the wayside. 

She probably was still sleeping. She rarely woke when Peggy had to slip from the bed they sometimes shared. 

The other occupant of the apartment wasn’t.

There was a silhouette at the broad window, looking out over the city.

“Tony,” she said quietly.

The young man didn’t turn. “I heard the elevator,” he said. “You wouldn’t be called down unless it was something serious.”

She closed the door behind her. The emotions were there, but she held them at bay. “Yes.”

He turned to look at her. “Dad?” he asked, and for a moment, he sounded like a child.

She nodded, breathing slowly. “I’m afraid so,” she said quietly. “Your mother too.”

Tony’s arms were wrapped tightly over his chest. By the light from the city, she could only see the outline of his face. “What happened?”

“They were on their way back to the city,” she said, verbatim from the police officer. It was easier than trying to think about it. “They hit a patch of ice. The driver lost control of the car. They broke through the barrier…”

Her words trailed off.

Tony was swaying where he stood. His voice shook when he asked in a whisper, “Uncle Buck too?”

“He’s alive,” she replied quietly. “Badly hurt, but alive.”

He didn’t make a sound.

She crossed the floor to his side. Closer, she could see his eyes were bright and wet, but he was blinking hard to keep the tears from falling.

“May I have a hug?” she asked, for his sake, knowing he would never ask.

He twisted into her embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her, and she stared beyond him at a shimmering reflected light on the window. His hair was mussed and tangled under her fingers, and she could feel the tears through her dressing gown.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she whispered, and felt his grip tighten. 

 

___________________________________________

 

The funeral was three days later.

People lined up to pay Tony condolences. He used his showman mask well that day, calm and civil and not at all the young man who had smashed a coffee machine against a wall in a fit of grief that morning. 

“It wasn’t working,” he said, when she found him sitting on the kitchen floor, his arms folded over his head. His voice was muffled. “I wanted coffee and it wasn’t working.”

Peggy wanted to weep for him, but it wasn’t the time for it.

She slipped on the Soldier’s gloves again, got him back on his feet, made the coffee for him, and sat alongside him in the car. Natasha sat on her other side, holding her mother’s hand tightly, her small pale face solemn.

They sat together at the service and stood together at the cemetery.

It was only afterwards, when all the formalities were done, that Tony had to mix with people.

Peggy sat at one of the tables, watching him.

“He’s sad,” Natasha said.

“I know, sweetheart,” Peggy murmured, drawing her eyes from Tony to look at her daughter.

Natasha was watching Tony. “Mom,” she said. “I would be sad if you died too.”

The Soldier stood down, and Peggy’s throat felt tight. “Come here, Tasha,” she murmured, opening her arms. Natasha climbed into her lap, wrapping her arms around Peggy’s neck, soft and small and pink and precious. 

They were still sitting like that when Tony finally broke free of his respected guests.

“Aunt Peg,” he said, his voice rough and exhausted, “I want to go.”

Natasha slid from Peggy’s lap, and stepped closer to Tony, wrapping her arms around his middle, her cheek pressing to his belly. “We’ll look after you, Tony,” she said so gravely that she earned a small, sad smile from the boy.

He bent and scooped her up. “I know you will, Nats,” he said. “You always do. You know how to make the pop tarts just right.”

She put her arms around his neck, and Peggy laid her hand on his shoulder. “Home?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head. “Uncle Buck,” he said.

Peggy hesitated. “He might not be well enough,” she said.

“I need to see him, aunt Peg.” He looked at her with Howard’s eyes. “Please. I just buried mom and dad. I need to see him.”

He didn’t say why, but she understood. 

James was the last family he really had left.

She led him back to the car. Both side of her knew how to take a car that wasn’t hers, and it was made even easier when the driver had left the keys in the ignition. She had trusted the man to drive them to the cemetery for appearances sake, but not again.

Tony sat in the back seat with Natasha curled up beside him. 

“Is uncle Buck still sick?” Natasha asked.

“He was hurt badly when the car crashed,” Peggy murmured, glancing back at her daughter in the rear view mirror. “He will look quite frightening, because of all the bandages.”

Natasha laid her head on Tony’s shoulder. “He’s uncle Buck,” she said. “I’m not scared.”

“Me either, Nats,” Tony said.

She looked up at him. “Pants on fire,” she said.

Tony laughed, a short, brittle sound. “How come you can always tell?”

“Because I’m smarter than you,” she said.

Peggy glanced back at them, and saw Natasha burrowing against Tony’s chest, and Tony hugging her just as tightly.

 

___________________________________

 

All things considered, James was remarkably well for a man who had crawled out of a burning car wreck.

The serum, she supposed, or whatever bastardised version of it Zola had created so many decades before. It kept him younger than it should have. It kept him healthy. And now, it made the new flesh heal up beneath the old.

It still looked like something from a nightmare.

As much as Natasha insisted she wasn’t afraid, she stood at the foot of the bed and stared at her hands as Tony approached the bed.

James was drifting in and out of consciousness, which wasn’t entirely surprising given the drugs that were being pumped into him. He was currently either asleep or unconscious or somewhere between the two states. 

Peggy put her hands on Natasha’s shoulders, and was unsurprised when her daughter turned around and hugged her. 

“Will he be okay?” she asked in a whisper.

Like Tony, Natasha adored their surrogate uncle. He was so gentle with Natasha, despite being capable of punching through a wall. His strength had scared him for so long, but in Peggy, he found someone as strong who could match him.

He and Howard were the ones who helped her piece herself back together again, and in turn, she offered the same support to James. She remembered the state he was in when Steve fell, and it seemed she had been used as a weapon to damage him further. It was only right that she help undo the damage.

So she did.

What began as a tentative allegiance became a strong friendship.

The thought of losing him had shocked her with its intensity. It was almost as acute as the revelation of Steve’s death. James was just as important to her, and it was only in the moment of believing him lost that she realised it. 

“I hope so,” she replied, stroking Natasha’s silky hair. It was always smooth, and Natasha wore it sweeping across her forehead. Sometimes, she brushed it aside, all impatience. The gesture reminded Peggy of someone, but she couldn’t place it. “James is very strong.”

Natasha nodded.

Several minutes later, something caught her eye.

“Tony,” she murmured, “would you take Natasha to get a soda? I think you could both do with some air.”

Tony shot her a grateful look, rising from the bed, and offered Natasha his hand.

Peggy waited until they were gone, then approached the bed, sitting carefully down on the edge. “James?”

His eyelids flickered again, slowly cracking open. “Carter,” he whispered.

She nodded. She wished she could touch his hand in comfort, but both his hands were surrounded by plastic bags, the flesh too raw and open for bandages. “We came from the funeral,” she said quietly. “Tony wanted to see you.”

His eyes were half-closed, and when he parted his lips, the skin cracked, dark beads of blood forming and staining his teeth. “Protect,” he whispered.

“Tony?” 

“All.” His breathing was rasping, painful. “Not accident.”

The Soldier sat up straighter. “Explain.”

His head sank back against the pillow, each breath shrilling between his lips. “Sabotage,” he breathed. “Murder.”

The Soldier’s blood was running cold as ice. She rose, spinning on her heel, and ran out into the hospital. She could hear the echo of Natasha’s voice and followed, yanking off her heeled shoes and running in her stockinged feet. A doctor, a nurse, a porter, tried to stop her, but she shoved past every one of them until she saw the children.

Natasha was pressing the buttons on a vending machine, but Tony was looking Peggy’s way when she strode towards them.

In seven years, he had grown accustomed to the switches between aunt Peg and the Soldier, and he recognised the difference. 

“Car?”

Peggy scooped Natasha up onto her hip. “Car.”

Natasha took one look at her mother’s face and didn’t argue.

 

__________________________________________

 

The apartment was quiet and dark. 

Natasha was in bed.

Peggy was sitting at the table with Tony.

As soon as Natasha was settled for the night, she had sat down with him and explained the rush from the hospital. He had listened attentively, his eyes fixed on his hands, which were clasped together on the table in front of him.

He knew about her past.

He knew that she and his father had enemies.

“Was he right?” he asked finally, looking up at her.

Peggy - the Soldier - was of one mind. “Yes,” she said. “The people I worked for had ways of making things appear like accidents. It was mostly clear up there, and the roads were well-salted. There shouldn’t have been any ice.”

Tony rose unsteadily, and went to rack of spirits in the kitchen. He poured himself a measure, then returned to the table, and cradled the glass between his palms.

“Why kill them?” he asked. “Why now?”

Peggy shook her head. “Perhaps they were working on something that was considered a threat,” she said. 

“Uncle Buck said…” Tony was silent for a moment, frowning. “Dad always believed it was possible to replicate the serum they used on Steve Rogers. He said the tests done on uncle Buck and on you could be the key.”

Peggy laid her hands on the table, gazing at them. “They had been looking into the possibility,” she said. “It was only in the early stages, but James was amenable. He had been hesitant for a long time.”

“It was because of you, wasn’t it?”

She lifted her eyes to his face. “He believed himself a danger,” she said. “Yes, my presence showed that wasn’t the case.” Her fingers drew up to her palms. “I never intended this to be the result.”

Tony looked stricken and reached over the table to grab her hands - both of them, she noticed. “No, no,” he said. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I mean you helped him and he wasn’t scared of it anymore. This wasn’t your fault, aunt Peg.”

Her mouth smiled and her hands squeezed his, but he believed the best of people.

Sometimes, he was so innocent.

“Regardless,” she said, “we need to decide how to proceed.”

Tony’s hands were still wrapped around hers. “We finish what they started,” he said. “It pissed someone off enough to kill them. I think we should piss that person off some more, and when they get mad enough to try and come after us…” 

He lifted one hand, his expression turning dark, and mimed a gun.

The Soldier nodded.

“Yes.”


	3. 1999

“No.”

The man on the other side of the table frowned. “Be reasonable, Carter.”

Peggy looked back at him. “I am more than capable of training my own daughter,” she said flatly. 

Director Fury, the head of SHIELD, drummed his fingertips on the table. It wasn’t a tell, Carter knew. He was doing it deliberately. He wasn’t impatient. He wasn’t frustrated. He was watching her as closely as she was watching him. “Is there any reason you don’t want her training within the SHIELD academy?”

There were dozens, but Peggy had them all filed away carefully. What he didn’t know was to her benefit. “She’s my daughter,” she said. “I will train her as I see fit.”

“And you don’t think that’s going to limit her?”

Peggy arched an eyebrow. “Your children,” she said, “are trained by operatives experienced in the field. I was a SHIELD operative before it even existed, Colonel. If you imagine I would limit Natasha’s training on account of shared blood, you are sorely mistaken.”

Fury inclined his head.

They both knew why he wanted Natasha as one of his operatives.

When she was thirteen, she was already a world-class markswoman and already well-versed in the fighting skills Peggy knew. Tony had also ensured that her knowledge of computers and hacking were excellent. She had earned an extra-large milkshake of her choosing by breaching the SHIELD mainframe in a security test when she was fifteen. 

That was probably when her file - already on SHIELD’s watch-list - was brought to the Director’s attention again.

As much as SHIELD was one of Howard’s creatures, Peggy was wary.

In the years since Howard’s death, she knew she had become more paranoid, especially in matters pertaining to her daughter. Tony felt the brunt of it too, though to a lesser extent. She had promised to protect them both.

No one else had come after them, despite their continued investigations into the serum.

Peggy wasn’t sure if it was because Howard had taken the secret to his grave, or whether her own vigilance was enough to protect them. The killers of Tony’s parents remained unknown, and that disconcerted her. She wasn’t prepared to let her guard down or take any chances, especially when it came to Natasha.

“You could just ask me if I want in.”

Peggy’s eyes remained on Fury’s face, and she saw the surprise. The door hadn’t opened, and the only other visible entrance to the room was behind Peggy’s shoulder. Natasha always did like testing out the air vents.

Natasha approached the table, sitting down on one of the two remaining chairs. “Mom.”

“Natasha,” Peggy murmured. “Does Tony know you were in the ducts?”

Natasha grinned at her. “He gave me the boost,” she said. 

Peggy was unsurprised. She sat back in her chair, unfurling her metal hand. “Director Fury has a proposition for you.”

Natasha turned her attention to Fury. It always impressed Peggy how utterly intense she could be. You didn’t want to be the subject of Natasha’s focus, because it meant she was paying attention to every little part of you, and she missed nothing. Peggy was reminded of a lioness by a waterhole, the same calm, enigmatic expression.

Some of it, she got from Peggy, but the cool blue eyes and the quiet, knowing half-smile had to be from her unknown father.

“You have come to our attention at SHIELD,” Fury said.

Natasha’s mouth turned up at one side. “What for this time?”

“A multitude of sins,” Fury replied, not rising to the bait, “some of them very interesting.”

Natasha slouched back in her seat, tilting her head to watch him. “You want me to be an Agent, like mom was in the war?”

After the war and her return from captivity, it wasn’t even an option.

Agents were required to focus on missions.

Peggy found it difficult to look beyond her daughter.

“We want to train you to the best of your abilities,” Fury agreed. “You have the capacity to be useful asset to the agency and your country.”

Natasha didn’t take her eyes off him. She lifted one hand to the table, drumming her fingertips in the same erratic rhythm he had beat only moments before.

“Have you read my mom’s file, Director Fury?” she said.

“I have.”

“Then you’ll know she was called an ‘asset’.”

Fury’s expression gave nothing away. “This is a different situation.”

Blue eyes blinked slowly. “The only difference I see is that I’m being given the choice,” she said. She sat up a little straighter. “Give me a dossier of what this training would be. I’ll make a decision based on that.” 

She rose from the chair and headed to the door.

Peggy didn’t turn to watch her go, but smiled placidly at Fury. 

“Free will is a marvellous thing,” she said. “I taught Natasha to appreciate it.”

“I can see that,” Fury said dryly. “I’ll have a dossier sent over.”

 

_________________________________________

 

It was raining.

Peggy sat on the back of the couch, tracking raindrops from the top of the glass all the way to the bottom of the pane.

“You know you can ask her not to do it.”

James.

He always seemed to know what was bothering her before she gave it voice.

It was no surprise, really, given how close they were.

They were both exceptional people, taken in the prime of their lives and corrupted by science and chemicals and people with ill-intentions. She had helped him, and he had helped her, and somewhere along the line, it had drawn them closer together.

Despite the prodding of both Tony and Natasha to make it official, it wasn’t what either of them would consider a normal relationship. They cared for each other, it was true, but there was something in it that was security and comfort. Not quite the passionate love the poets wrote about, but safe and settled and warm. 

She looked at him. “That would defeat the purpose of giving her the freedom to choose,” she said. “I don’t consider emotional blackmail fair.”

James came around the side of the couch and sat down beside her. “Even if it would put you on edge if she chose to go there?” he said, offering her a mug of cocoa in his scarred hands. He had never fully healed after the car crash, and still carried the scars of burns as a reminder.

She took it, sipped it. “What I feel is irrelevant,” she said quietly. “I won’t make her put her life on hold because I can’t bear to let her out of my reach. She shouldn’t have to be limited because of me.”

James slipped his arm around her shoulder. “You know she won’t see it that way.”

Peggy nodded, looking at the cream dissolving slowly into the cocoa. “She won’t,” she agreed, “but I would.”

James huffed a noisy breath and gave her a squeeze. “You think in circles, Carter. Always did.”

Peggy wished she could have smiled, but it was a simple fact that she was of two minds about most things in her life. She was herself, but sometimes, the Soldier was present. In those moments, she always looked for the weaknesses, the flaws, the risks, the dangers.

If Natasha chose to accept Fury’s offer, she would be trained by people in SHIELD. It would be monitored. They would see her strengths and weaknesses, and if that information came into the wrong hands, then their enemies would know it too, know how to neutralise her.

The mug shattered in her metal hand, and she swore between clenched teeth.

James held out a dishcloth. 

“We need to buy some sturdier mugs,” he said.

Peggy mopped at her trousers. “I need to control my emotions better,” she said.

James looked at her. “When it’s about Tasha?” he said. “No such thing.” He leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her temple. “You get cleaned up. I’m going to take you out and distract you.”

She squatted down to mop at the mess on the floor. “How?”

“For the leaving feast.”

Peggy went still. “Leaving feast?”

“You forgot me and Tony are heading to Switzerland tomorrow?” He feigned shock. “Carter, I’m stunned.”

Peggy looked up at him. She had forgotten. With Natasha’s impending sixteenth birthday and SHIELD approaching her, she had completely forgotten that Tony was now sought the world over for his knowledge.

His advances with Doctor Erskine’s serum had raised hopes for a new version, but his field never had been advanced genetics. He’d pushed it as far as he could, but he needed scientists who were more skilled, and the convention in Switzerland was as good a place as any to cross paths with some of the greatest scientific minds of the day.

He’d also grinned his rakish grin when he told her there was a massive New Year’s party he intended to crash.

He had told her all of it, all the plans and the schedules, because he knew how she worried if she didn’t know, but all of it had slipped her mind. Natasha was - as always - her priority, even above Stark. 

James must have seen the Soldier waking in her eyes. 

He had his own Soldier, the guardian who had protected Steve and now protected Tony. His Soldier had been pushed to the fore by Zola, just as hers had been drawn out by the KGB and NKVD and every one of a dozen other acronyms they used before they fell. 

The Soldier was ruthless and primal, and he knew hers as well as he knew his own.

“I’ll be there,” he said, crouching down to face her. “He’s going to be accompanied every step of the way. I have SHIELD keeping eyes on him as well, just in case. You don’t need to focus on this one.”

Peggy dropped the shattered shards of the mug and lifted her hand to James’ face. He hadn’t shaved again. He insisted it was fashionable. The stubble was coarse against her palm. 

“You want a hug?” he said.

Peggy nodded, and he knelt down in front of her and wrapped her up in his arms.

It was strange the comfort she could take from the only arms that were as physically strong as she was. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder and held him tightly. He dropped a kiss on the only patch of skin within reach, the base of her neck.

“Y’know,” he murmured, rubbing her back, “this is why Tony keeps saying we should get married.”

Peggy smiled briefly against his shoulder. “Tony may well know how to build a computer from some wires and a piece of card, but he knows nothing about how people work,” she murmured.

“It’s because we’re both old,” James said. “Old and attractive.”

Peggy sat back and brushed at her cheeks with cool and warm fingertips. “Maybe we should.”

The startled panic on James’ face was endearing. “What? Really?”

When she smiled, it was true and warm. “Don’t worry, James,” she said, “I’m not ready for that kind of commitment.”

His smile was brief and sad. “Still waiting for the right partner?”

It was a pang in her chest, even now. 

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek softly. He closed his eyes. Even if there was something between them, there was also someone.

The ghost of Steve still lingered there, even so many years on.

“You mentioned a feast?” she said, gathering up the broken pieces of the mug again.

James nodded. “Shopping,” he said. “We need to have something special. A pre-new-year party.”

Peggy nodded. “That would be a good distraction,” she agreed.

James smiled, and leaned forward to drop a quick kiss on the end of her nose. “Good,” he said. “I’ll get the list.”

She watched him go, then rubbed her eyes with one hand.

Bad enough that Natasha’s life was rapidly slipping from her control, but the knowledge that James and Tony would soon be out of her sightline and on the far side of the world made her shiver. Too many factors, too many variables. 

She was tired, but there was no time to rest. There was never time to rest.

She picked up the shattered mug and rose, tipping the pieces into the rubbish bin.

 

__________________________________________________

 

“Happy new year, mom.”

Peggy smiled, looking at her daughter. “You too, Tasha,” she murmured.

They were curled up together on the couch in front of the fireplace, watching some old film that Natasha had dug out. Takeout boxes and cake boxes lined the coffee table, some empty, some still half-full. 

It wasn’t what anyone would consider a wild party by any stretch of the imagination.

Natasha pulled the blanket more snugly around her legs and nestled against Peggy’s side, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“The Director sent over the dossier,” she murmured.

Peggy’s eyes were fixed on the screen in front of her. She knew, of course, and Natasha knew that she knew. The Soldier was stirring, wary. “Interesting reading?” she asked lightly.

“Some of it was,” Natasha said, “but a lot of it is stuff I already know.”

The only sound over the film was the crackle of the fire and the whirr of the gears in Peggy’s left hand as it clenched and unclenched. A tell, she thought in irritation, forcing it to stillness.

Natasha was quiet for a moment.

“It could be good,” she finally said, “to learn from them.”

The blade had fallen. Peggy’s lips trembled and she pressed them together to force a smile. “If that’s what you want, you know I won’t stop you,” she said. 

“I know.” Natasha sighed quietly. She shifted and slipped her left hand into Peggy’s right. “I know it’ll kill you if I do it too.” She lifted her head and looked at her mother. “How about we find somewhere in the middle?”

Peggy nodded shortly, wishing she could recall how to breathe. “Such as?”

“They train me where you can see it,” Natasha said. “You control and secure the location, and they don’t get surveillance rights. They come to us. If they want me that badly, I think the director would agree to it.”

The relief was like a breath of air.

“That would be… acceptable,” Peggy agreed, drawing her hand from Natasha’s to wrap her arm around Natasha’s shoulder. Of course her clever girl would work out a way for everyone to get what they wanted. 

A mobile phone chimed and Natasha snatched it up.

“It’s Tony and uncle Buck,” she said, smiling. “They say happy new year too.”

Peggy couldn’t hold back a smile. “Happy new year to all,” she said.


	4. 2010

“C’mon, Carter.”

“No.”

James’s hands came to rest on her shoulders. “You know she won’t appreciate you hovering like this,” he said quietly.

Peggy wrapped her hands more tightly around one another, her eyes fixed silently on the figure on the bed. The monitors beeped and trilled. The IV providing the blood transfusion flowed. Natasha’s chest rose and fell with enforced breathing.

It wasn’t the first mission Natasha had been on.

She had performed dozens of successful extractions and infiltrations since taking the badge. She was an expert at them. She had trained with the best that SHIELD could offer, as well as her mother and James.

And despite that, she was lying in a hospital bed in a military base in Cyprus.

Peggy didn’t know what the mission had been, nor did she care. 

The Soldier in her was screaming that the threat who had carried out this assault needed to be neutralised. The Soldier was right, but she had no intention of stepping away from the room until her daughter regained consciousness.

She heard James sigh, heard his footsteps as he walked away.

He returned fifteen minutes later. 

“They’re bringing a camp bed in for you,” he said quietly. “If you’re going to stay, you need to get some sleep.” His hand was warm on her flesh shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, Carter. If you’re going to go down that route, you need to rest.”

Silently, she lifted her hand and clasped his fingers.

James bent down and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’ll be at the hotel,” he said, “if you want me.”

She held his fingers a moment longer, and turned to look up at him. He was the one person who understood her, and who was always there for her, even when the Soldier stepped out of the shadow. “James…”

One side of his mouth turned up. “Don’t say it,” he said. “It’s bad luck.” He lifted her hand, kissed her knuckles. “But I don’t say it to you too.”

She almost smiled, only almost, and her eyes felt wet.

She was tired.

“I’ll find you later,” she said.

He nodded, and leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips.

 

___________________________________________

 

Natasha regained consciousness.

She debriefed, first to her commander, then to her mother.

Her assailant was an unknown. 

From what Natasha remember see, it had been a woman, blonde-haired and masked. Most significantly, she was marked with the red star. Peggy felt a chill pass through her, and reached over to touch her own left arm. The red star that had adorned her false arm had been methodically scraped away years before, but she still remembered it.

The KGB might have fallen apart, but there were echoes carrying forward.

When Natasha told her to go and find James and get some real rest, she only acquiesced after doubling the guard around Natasha’s room. No one, except approved medical staff, was to be permitted entry.

Director Fury granted the exceptional treatment.

Peggy made her way back to the hotel. She felt light-headed, rage building up around her like the shift in air pressure that preceded a storm. The door handle buckled under her left hand as she strode in, and James rose, looking at her in expectation.

“I’m going to kill them all,” she informed him, in a ragged snarl. “They need to die.”

“They?” he said.

Her left hand crushed the remains of the door handle, and she knew he understood.

 

_______________________________________________

 

They stayed in Cyprus until Natasha was well enough to travel.

Tony flew over in his private jet to collect her, with the promise of rest and recuperation at his summer home in Malibu. Peggy commended her daughter into James’s care. Tony was the one at the handles of the wheelchair. He looked drawn and angry, as he wheeled Natasha - addled with painkillers - to the door.

“I want to help, aunt Peg,” he said quietly.

“Make sure she rests and eats,” the Soldier replied. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

Tony nodded grimly. “I had it delivered to your hotel room,” he said. He looked her up and down. “You sure you should be doing this?”

Her eyes flicked down to Natasha, whose chin was drooping onto her chest. “All threats must be dealt with promptly,” she said. She returned her eyes to his face. “Is Stane holding down the fort?”

“I told him I was coming to see a girl,” he said with a shrug. “If he thinks I’m inventing or chasing girls, he lets me get on with things. I don’t need him breathing down my neck.”

“Good,” the Soldier said. Diversionary tactics were beneficial. If their enemies didn’t know Natasha was being returned to the United States, they wouldn’t know to look for her there to finish the job they had started. 

Tony released the handles of the chair. “Aunt Peg,” he began, then reached out and squeezed her arm. “Be careful.”

She nodded curtly. She bent, kissing Natasha on the cheek, then straightened up to look at James. “You stay with her,” she said. “Until I return, you stay with her.”

James looked as grim as she felt. “Come back, Carter,” he said.

She raised her hand, saluted briefly. “I intend to, Sergeant.”

 

_________________________________________________________

 

Her enemies were skilled.

They must have realised the error they made in letting Natasha live. Their trail was covered time and time again. No matter how far she went or how deep she dug, they were very good, and even with the blood of their stooges on her hands, it was no real comfort.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months.

She was sitting in a café in Kiev one afternoon, some months after Natasha was shot. A news programme was showing on the television above the counter, and she wasn’t paying it much attention as she read the latest files she had acquired.

Something caught her notice.

A voice.

A tone.

Her head snapped up.

Obadiah Stane.

She stared at the television.

The words were making no sense.

Tony Stark in Afghanistan. Abducted. Armed militia. Suspected terrorists. There was footage from a weapons demonstration. Her heart pounded against her ribs. James wasn’t there. He was Tony’s bodyguard, and he wasn’t there. She saw Colonel Rhodes among the soldiers in the footage, but no James.

Silently, she gathered up her files and folders, and retreated from the café.

She was on the first flight back to New York.

When the doors of the elevator opened into the apartment they still considered their family home, Peggy looked blankly at James. He looked like hell, hollow-eyed and ashen, and she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him.

“Any word?”

He shook his head. “You?”

Peggy shook her head. “Where’s Natasha?”

He jerked his head towards the study. Peggy slipped her hand in his. She could feel his surprise, but he didn’t withdraw. His fingers tightened around hers, and he led her towards the study and her daughter.

“It’s good that I didn’t go,” he said quietly, as they crossed the floor. “Everyone who was in the convoy with him was killed.”

Peggy winced. “Rhodes?”

James shook his head. “Tony made him ride in the second convoy,” he said. “Saved his life.”

Peggy looked at him suspiciously. “Did Tony know that there was a danger?”

James met her eyes. “Tony’s lived with or near you for nearly twenty years, Carter,” he said. “Your paranoia is contagious. You always make us travel in two cars. Could be he did the same as a precaution.”

It was a small consolation.

Colonel Rhodes was one of the few that could be counted among Tony’s real friends.

She pushed the door open with her other hand.

The relief at the sight of Natasha made her legs shake.

“Mom!” Natasha was up from the desk and running towards her in a heartbeat, and Peggy caught her in a tight hug. She was upright. She was mobile. She was recovering. All good things.

She was also not alone.

The other young woman rose.

“Miss Potts,” Peggy acknowledged.

Virginia Potts nodded. She was the first of Tony’s assistants to last beyond a month. He had a knack for driving people off with his flippant behaviour. So far, Miss Potts had lasted almost a year, and privately James and Peggy both agreed she was good for the boy. 

“Natasha’s asked me to help keep eyes on the information coming in to the company,” she said, “in case we get ransom demands. Obadiah’s making sure business is running as smoothly as possible.”

Peggy smoothed Natasha’s hair. “Good,” she said. “We need all eyes on him.”

“Mom?” Natasha said.

“Contact Colonel Rhodes,” Peggy said. “We have somewhere to be.”

 

_______________________________________

 

There was nothing worse than feeling useless.

Their presence wasn’t necessarily unwelcome, but it was unneeded.

The mountain reaches of Afghanistan seemed unending, and without a specific place to search, there was nowhere for a rescue party to start looking.

James spent hours pacing the perimeter of the camp compound. Peggy would have been just as bad, if Natasha wasn’t present. Natasha kept the Soldier at bay, providing her mother with the silent support she needed. Together, they went over maps and data brought back in by the drones and aerial reports.

There were dozens of possible locations for camps. 

Sometimes, their observations led to strikes. On other occasions, they were politely told to return to their tent. Colonel Rhodes joined them when he could, keeping them informed as much as he was able to.

The days dragged by.

James was making himself ill with worry. He ate, but barely enough, and slept little. More often than not, he would subside to sit by Peggy’s camp bed and she would stroke his sweat-matted hair until he slept, his head on her thigh.

If he could persuade Rhodes, he would go out on the daily scouting flights. More than once, he was dragged from the plane, cursing and snarling.

He was in the camp with both Peggy and Natasha the day that chaos broke out. 

To the south, smoke was billowing up in a spiralling column, dozens of miles away. Peggy raised her hand to shield her eyes, and she could feel James practically vibrating in place by her side. It was an empty mountain region, according to all reports. Nothing should have been exploding there.

Natasha was the one to laugh aloud. “Tony!”

 

___________________________________________

 

Tony was flown back into the camp by helicopter. 

When the door slid open, he barely had a chance to stumble down from the back. James and Natasha were on him in an instant, though Peggy couldn’t be sure whether they were embracing him or holding him upright. It was probably a fair measure of both.

Rhodes swung down behind him.

“We need to get him to the medics,” he said pointedly.

Natasha stepped aside, and together, Rhodes and James half-carried, half-frog-marched the exhausted Tony towards the infirmary tent. A nod from the Colonel sent all unnecessary personnel scattering, until only Tony, Rhodes, and the three of them remained and the doctors swept in.

Peggy came to stand at James’s side, touching his elbow.

He was shaking.

Relief was a strange thing.

She watched as Tony was divested of his ragged vest, his skin a mess of dirt and blood.

“Tony,” James said blankly. “Why the hell d’you have a flashlight in your chest?”

Tony raised his head. He looked awful. “Long story,” he said, breathing in and out slowly. He saw Peggy and raised a hand. “Hey, aunt Peg. Long time no see.”

She tried to smile, but it was a weak, fragile thing. “Try not to make a habit of these little adventures,” she said. “Between you and Tasha, this doesn’t need to be a competition for which of you can make us go grey the fastest.”

Tony looked up at her, then reached out his shaking hand. “Trust me,” he said, when she squeezed his fingers, “this isn’t a vacation I’d recommend.”

Natasha provided the most succinct and fitting response by smacking him firmly across the back of the head. “Ass.”

 

________________________________________

 

It would have been simple if they had a normal life.

They could have gone back to normal, with no gunshots or abductions or violence.

But they didn’t have that luxury.

Tony was on edge, and the best attempts of the other three of them, he seemed determined to do it alone. Almost alone.

There were frantic phone calls from Pepper to Natasha: about removing machines from his chest, about robotic suits, and then, worst of all, about bullet holes and a sighting of a red and gold robotic suit in an insignificant region in central Asia.

James tried to speak to him.

From all accounts, Tony just looked at him, and told him he’d signed up with Captain America when he could have been safe at home. It was true, and it was a low blow, even for Tony. Tony ended up with a bruised jaw, and James nursed a bruised fist for days.

Peggy went in his place the next time the suit was sighted.

“You’re making yourself into a target,” she said, watching as Tony was divested of the plates of metal. She recognised some of the designs for the structure. It was a compliment she would have preferred not to receive.

Tony stepped down from the platform, laying the glove down. “I’m making a difference,” he said. He looked at her. “Dad made his money from weapons, aunt Peg. I saw what people are doing with them. I can’t let that happen anymore.”

“That’s no reason to put yourself back in the firing line.”

He wiped his hands on a cloth, smearing the oil from his fingers. “And where were you when I went to Afghanistan?” he said. “You weren’t nursing your wounded kid back to health, that’s for sure.”

The Soldier looked back at him. “I was produced for this reason,” she said, her voice cold and clipped. “I was manufactured and developed and enhanced to be put in those situations, to kill and to fight. You weren’t. You’re a child in a toy.”

Tony’s expression was the same as his father’s, the stony resolve she knew she could beat against until doomsday and never wear down. “So teach me,” he said. “You taught Natasha. Teach me.”

“Why?”

He met her eyes. “Because for once in my damned life I want to actually do something useful.”

 

______________________________________________

 

She trained him, along with James, even though their perspectives were all different.

To Tony, the suit was the same as a gun or a knife in the hands of the rest of them. 

Through the eyes of soldiers and assassins, he had created the ultimate weapon, but he was the only one who seemed to see it as a device to keep the peace. He could have sold the rights and made a fortune, but he dug in his heels, and that was when the stability of their lives was shattered entirely.

Natasha had been trying to get Tony to talk to her, on SHIELD’s behalf, but was getting nowhere. Peggy knew it had to be getting more serious when external agents, people she had never met, were circling Miss Potts.

Then came the phone call that none of them anticipated.

“Miss Carter? It’s Pepper?”

Peggy - in the middle of arranging a dinner - wiped her hands. “Miss Potts? What is it?”

“I think we’re going to need you and Mr Barnes down at the factory,” she said. “The people from SHIELD are here. It’s Obadiah.” She lowered her voice. “I think he arranged for Tony to be abducted.”

The phone shattered when it hit the floor.

Peggy was already moving.

She got James on the cell as she raced for the garage, taking the fastest of the cars. He was coming in from the north, she from the south. 

By the time they reached the factory, it was already burning.

James went bone white. He didn’t hesitate and she didn’t stop him from running into the ruins. He must have crossed paths with Miss Potts, because she stumbled out, bleeding and smoke-stained.

The explanation was garbled and shaking. James made sense of it when he came back down, Tony unconscious and cradled in his arms like a child. Obadiah was up on the roof, in a much larger and more primitive version of Tony’s suit. He was dead. Electrified.

Peggy looked at the shaken woman clutching her arms, then at James, and the unconscious Tony.

“It won’t end here,” the Soldier said quietly.

 

______________________________________

 

They weren’t in the same room for the press conference.

She and James always drew too much attention when they were seen together. Something about two World War II veterans turned professional bodyguards, while still looking younger than their charges, unsettled people.

Natasha had Tony’s back.

She was, unfortunately, not quite quick enough to brain him with a chair when he started speaking.

“I am Iron Man.”

James buried his head in his hands with a low groan.

Peggy reached over and squeezed his shoulder.

“I’m going to kill him,” he said, looking at her. “I’m going to kill him myself.”


	5. 2011

What with one thing and another, Peggy was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Tony Stark was as bad, if not worse, than his father when it came to pushing the boundaries of common sense and science. 

After the unfortunate events with Bruce Banner - unauthorised tests of a variant of the serum - the serum had been marked as a liability. It was only in the wake of his abduction that Tony had found a new obsession. 

When he had escaped from his abductors, eighteen months before, it had been in a robotic suit. Another robotic suit had been made in the aftermath, and suddenly, Tony seemed to think he was indestructible.

James understood Peggy’s concern, shared it even, but both of them could understand his actions.

When you have been made weak and helpless, reclaiming your strength was a key part of recovery. They had both been through the same gamut of emotions themselves. 

The problem was that Tony’s role models were a genetically-enhanced pair of super-soldiers who had been psychologically damaged by their experiences to the point of dangerously overprotective instincts and an urge to destroy anything that harmed the people in their care.

It was never going to end well.

Tony’s reasoning was that he wanted to take care of them for a while, because god only knew they’d spent enough of their lives watching his back. The sentiment was fine, but he insisted on doing so by donning a tin can and calling himself Iron Man. 

As expected his advances in technology drew enemies out of the wood work.

SHIELD had Tony on their watch list. Natasha was working side-by-side with Miss Potts to keep at least a modicum of sanity at Stark Industries. Colonel Rhodes was doing his utmost to limit any damage Tony could do publicly. James and Peggy were constantly on guard.

And Tony swept on blithely, exulting in the fact he was now capable of defending where he had only ever been defended. He laughed in the face of Senators. He did fly-bys as if he wouldn’t receive reprimands. He went on self-assigned missions to hunt terrorists.

He was getting reckless and dangerous, and James was the one to finally realise why.

“He’s sick,” he said quietly to Peggy, in the privacy of their bedroom. “Tony.”

Peggy lifted her head from the pillow to look at him. “In what way?” she asked.

“He’s got his computers programmed to cover for him, but he left some of that stuff he was drinking in the cup,” James replied. “I had it tested. The compound isn’t anything health-based or faddy. It’s a very specific mix.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s ill,” Peggy murmured.

“Look at him. Really look. We know what he’s like, Carter. We used to know when he was wearing a mask. Now, I can’t tell anymore.”

Peggy lay down in his embrace, and tried not to think about it.

It didn’t work.

She barely slept and the Soldier was the one the greet Tony the next morning.

“Hey, aunt…” He trailed off, eyeing her warily. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed. “It’s not nothing when you go Industrial Weapon on me, aunt Peg,” he said.

She said nothing, watching him. He was thinner than he had been. It had happened so slowly, she hadn’t noticed, but now that she looked closely, the weight he’d struggled to regain after his abduction was slipping away again. 

There were other signs, small ones, little things that could be attributed to lack of sleep or restlessness or too much caffeine, but combined spoke of an unwell man. There was also the mark of a syringe in the side of his neck.

“How long have you been ill?”

Tony’s jaw clenched. “It’s nothing.”

“I doubt that.”

Tony turned back to the worktop, refilling his flask with a vile green liquid. “I’m on it,” he said, then snorted. “Did you put SHIELD up to locking me down? Or was that down to Natasha?”

Peggy wasn’t surprised. “That would be her,” she said. “We’re worried about you.”

He turned, smiling a mirthless smile. “Then I guess I better try and find a cure,” he said. “If I get worse, it’s going to be like the rescue party all over again.”

 

 

____________________________________________

 

 

Colonel Rhodes sat awkwardly down on the bench.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I can’t get the suit open.”

Tony was sitting beside him, leaning back, his eyes closed. “That’s what happens when you let the bad guys blow you out of the sky,” he said. His suit was as beaten up as Rhodes’s was, and looking at them, Peggy felt like a school teacher with two troublesome pupils.

Bad enough that Tony had been ill, but an old adversary of his father had decided the time was right to try and destroy both Tony and everything Stark Industries stood for.

The Stark Expo was in chaos.

Shrubberies were burning. The grass was littered with shattered drones. The buildings were creaking and falling apart on all sides.

And there, in the middle of it, Tony was smiling blissfully at the sky.

“This wasn’t your fault, Colonel,” she said. “Once James and Natasha have finished with Vanko, we’ll get you back to the house, if Tony has left any of it standing. There should be a tool kit there to get you out. Failing that, a can opener.”

Tony cracked open one eye. “How many levels of trouble am I in?” he asked.

Peggy looked back at him. The Soldier straightened her back.

Tony winced, sitting up straighter. “That bad.”

Peggy folded her arms, and raised her eyebrows. 

“In my defence,” Tony said sheepishly, “I was technically dying.”

“Speaking as someone who has technically been dead,” she retorted evenly, “I hardly think that’s an excuse.”

Colonel Rhodes stifled a snort of amusement. 

“You’re not helping,” Tony grumbled, elbowing his friend.

“You’re very fortunate James is fond of you,” Peggy said. “Otherwise, I have no doubts he would have strung you up by your own entrails for your behaviour.”

Tony shifted awkwardly on the bench, more like a child in front of a parent than a full-grown man. “I created a new element,” he said hopefully. “That’s something. And we stopped the drone attack.”

Rhodes looked at him. “Man, even I know that argument is a bad one,” he said. “Why the hell did they have drones in the first place?”

Tony winced. “Okay, point made,” he said. He got up stiffly. “So. Grovelling?”

“Like there’s no tomorrow,” Peggy said with a grave nod.

 

______________________________________________

 

 

Iron Man was famous.

However, his little brother, War Machine, was the one doing all the dirty work now.

Colonel Rhodes had donned the armour on a full-time basis.

In the weeks and months that followed the disaster of the Stark Expo, Tony seemed surprisingly passive to people who hadn’t spent time any amount of time with Peggy, James, and Natasha. No one believed that one SHIELD agent and two aging soldiers could have stopped him from doing anything.

It was all on James.

He had known Tony since he was a baby, and had practically raised the boy. He knew how to get the responses they were looking for, and Tony was gently nudged towards guilt for his part in bringing terrorism attacks into the middle of their lives and their homes.

It wasn’t all-consuming, of course.

Tony was still basking in the victory of creating a new element, but over breakfast, all James had to do was observe that there was still a crater where parts of the Expo had been standing, and Tony’s ego was deflated by several degrees.

Natasha sat down on one of the stools at the breakfast bar beside her mother.

“So how long does this last?” she asked as she poured herself a cup of tea.

Peggy smiled quietly. “As long as James keeps finding it funny,” she said. She looked down at her cup. “It reminds him of Steve, you know.”

Natasha looked at her in surprise. “Captain America Steve?”

Peggy nodded, watching the two men arguing. “Steve was hopeless when it came to coming up with ridiculous plans,” she said, “and James was the only one with the nerve to argue him down. A few of the Commandos were bold, but only James would slam him up against the wall and tell him he was being foolish.”

“I guess uncle Howard wasn’t exactly the same kind of person,” Natasha murmured.

Peggy shook her head. “Tony has the kind of attitude that James was used to,” she said. She smiled briefly, sadly. “He still misses it.”

Natasha nudged her lightly. “So do you.”

Peggy couldn’t meet her eyes. It was almost sixty years since the day she first saw Steve. It was hard to imagine how much worse it was for James, who had lived through every one of those days without the man who had been his best friend.

“Yes,” was all she could say.


	6. March-April 2012

As parties went, for a ninety-third birthday it was unusually lively.

It was a small gathering. Natasha and Tony both knew too well how Peggy reacted to unexpected crowds, so it was limited to the four of them, as well as a handful of friends and associates Peggy had made since her arrival in America. 

With the repairs to the Malibu house underway, they had settled for staying in the old Manhattan block. It also meant Tony had the opportunity to show of his latest shared project, a new and fully arc-powered building within the city. He proudly unveiled it at Peggy’s birthday, declaring it a pet project of his and Miss Potts - Pepper, she insisted on being called.

From anyone else, that tone would have been about a child, but for Tony, a glorious modern building with all the tech anyone could want or need was on a similar level.

The fact that he insisted it was also Pepper’s made Peggy look at James with a knowing smile. To James’s amusement, Tony had bowed to cliché and fallen for his assistant. Peggy couldn’t blame him. Not only was Pepper charming and sweet-natured, she was also capable, clever, and more than a match for Tony at both his best and worst.

Pepper looked flustered but pleased at getting the shared credit.

Later in the evening, when only two guests remained, Peggy stood by the bar with Natasha, watching Tony cajoling Pepper onto the makeshift dance floor with much eye-rolling and laughing and claims of not having enough champagne.

“She’s good for him,” Natasha said with a smile. “She can pull his head out of the clouds for five minutes.”

The Soldier slanted a glance at her daughter. “Is she.” It wasn’t a question.

“Clean,” Natasha murmured, her lips against the rim of her glass. “Don’t worry, mom. I checked on every possible level, even the ones I’m not meant to have access to. She’s exactly who she says and what she seems.” She sipped her wine, then set her glass down. “Do you think the good Colonel will get flustered if I try and get him to dance with me?”

Peggy smiled. “It can’t hurt to try,” she said. “If all else fails, it’ll make Tony jealous.”

“Of Rhodes?” Natasha raised her eyebrows sceptically. 

Peggy chuckled. “Of you,” she said. “Rhodes and Potts are his non-family people. You know how territorial he gets.”

Natasha’s face lit in a grin. “Well, then I better make it a good dance,” she said, slipping out of her heeled shoes and making a bee-line for Colonel Rhodes, who was leaning against the wall, watching Tony and Pepper with amusement. 

Peggy watched as Natasha swept up to him, stole his drink, and dragged him - not entirely unwillingly - onto the dance floor.

“You bringing a dance-off into this, Tasha?” Tony said indignantly. “I was going for romantic here.”

“We can make it romantic if you need the challenge,” Natasha retorted, grinning at him. She gave Rhodes her sultriest look. “How about it, Colonel? Can you out-suave this guy?”

Rhodes was trying to bite back a grin. “Tasha, I remember when you were seven and telling me you were going to marry him,” he said. 

Tony crowed in delight when Natasha actually blushed. “Oh my god! You wanted to marry me?”

“I was seven!”

“Oh, that is just beautiful, Tash,” Tony said, laughing. “You just shot yourself in the foot! I guess I win the romantic dance-off without even have to break out my moves!”

Peggy heard James approach a moment before his arm slipped around her waist. “How about we show these young upstarts a thing or two?” he murmured for her ears only. 

She looked at him, her heart drumming, and nodded.

For all the years they had been friends and then lovers, it was always private. Only Tony and Natasha ever saw any sign of it, and even then, it was discreet, brief touches, kisses to cheeks, and the fact they sometimes slept in the same bed.

James took her by the hand, leading her into the cleared space that was serving as a dance floor, and drew her into his arms. She could barely hear the music, and she really didn’t care, her eyes on his face.

It was foolish, how long they had been together and kept it closed up like some guilty secret.

She lifted her metal hand to his cheek, and drew his lips down to hers.

It was only a brief kiss, but it was all the more meaningful for it.

James was looking at her with a stupid, soft expression when she drew back, and she smiled in return, stroking his cheek. The sensors of her fingertips could pick up the rising warmth in his skin.

“And score one for the senior citizens,” Tony said. He was grinning from ear to ear. “About time.”

Peggy met James’s eyes and smiled.

 

_____________________________________________

 

A message came through on the coded line that only four of them had access to.

That was enough to put Peggy on edge, but things got worse when she tried to respond to Natasha and found the connection blocked. Her daughter wasn’t meant to be on any missions or be anywhere that would block her.

She called James.

He had received the message too, and was having the same trouble.

“SHIELD,” Tony informed them, when they patched him into the call. “Something must be going on internally. If they’re locking down all communication, it’s got to be big.”

Peggy’s eyes went out of focus and she stared blankly over the city.

SHIELD was supposed to be made up of allies.

“Don’t do it, Peggy,” James said. “We need to wait this out. Find out what’s happening.”

“Yes,” she said, and disconnected the call.

The Soldier was out of the building and heading in the direction of the New York SHIELD buildings, her preferred revolvers a firm weight against her ribs, beneath her jacket. 

An alarm was shrilling, and she was still two blocks away when she saw a convoy of black cars roaring by. Something was going on, enough for SHIELD to go out en masse. Her hands itched to reach beneath her jacket, to arm herself, but Peggy knew there were civilians around, and civilians were inclined to panic.

A hand caught her arm, and she would have thrown the assailant if Natasha hadn’t called out to her first.

Peggy subsided, turning to look at her daughter. Natasha was pale, and her grip on her mother’s arm wasn’t only to restrain her. Natasha looked shocked. That happened so rarely that Peggy came up short.

“What’s going on?”

“Uncle Buck is on his way down,” Natasha said. “I need to get both of you inside. Fury wants us all there.”

“Natasha,” Peggy said quietly. “What is it?”

For the first time in years, Natasha looked like a lost child. “I can’t tell you, mom. You wouldn’t believe me if I did.” She slid her hand down Peggy’s arm, clutching her hand. “Will you come with me?”

Peggy complied, letting Natasha lead her placidly into the building.

Like so many of the SHIELD facilities, it was a shining model of modern design: cold and stark and sterile. Peggy remembered other places like that, the pinnacle of scientific development, shining and polished.

At least the Stark laboratories always looked like a bomb had hit them. Sometimes, it had, and in the middle of the chaos, there would always be at least one used coffee cup. 

She shivered at the recollection of other buildings and corridors and glass walls.

Natasha took her down into a waiting room. 

Peggy sat down, folding her hands together, and looked around. It was pleasant enough, with plush couches and magazines. She also picked out the surveillance cameras, and at least two microphones concealed in the decoration. She made a conscious effort to appear at ease. 

SHIELD had always been wary of her capacity as the soldier.

Better not to give them reason for concern.

Natasha, on the other hand, was pacing back and forth, looking out into the hall from time to time.

Finally, she pulled the door wide, and James strode in.

“You got an explanation for us, Tasha?” he said tersely. “Like why every agent I ran into has suddenly got a bad attack of the need-to-be-somewhere-else?”

Natasha nodded, wetting her lips. “You might want to sit down,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” James said, hands in fists. “You use the coded network, and now SHIELD agents are looking at me like I’m the goddamn tooth fairy.”

“James,” Peggy murmured, watching Natasha. Her daughter never looked discomfited or uneasy, but now, Natasha was pale and running her fingers through her hair. All masks were gone and her child was worried. Maybe even scared.

James blew out a long breath. “Okay,” he said, coming over to the couch and sitting on the edge. “Explain.”

Natasha sat down carefully on the chair facing them. She pressed her hands against the edge of the seat and looked at her knees. “A Russian drilling team was working up in the Arctic recently,” she said. “They found something. Called SHIELD in.” She raised her eyes to them. “It was a ship. A big one.”

James was breathing hard. “The Valkyrie? They found the Valkyrie?”

Peggy remembered the name from the files. “Steve?” 

Natasha nodded. “He was there,” she said quietly.

James blindly reached out, groping for Peggy’s hand. “Finally,” he said, his voice shaking with emotion. “He deserves a hero’s funeral.”

Natasha shifted on the chair. “Not exactly,” she said. She looked at her mother, and Peggy could see the apology and distress in her eyes. “He’s alive.”

Peggy didn’t realise how tightly she was gripping James’s hand until he cursed between his teeth, his fingers crushed between hers.

“What?” she whispered.

“Steve Rogers,” Natasha said, enunciating every word carefully, as if she couldn’t quite believe them herself. “He’s alive. He was frozen in the ice, but when they thawed him out…”

“No.” James sounded as blank as Peggy felt. “That’s impossible.”

“No,” Peggy said unsteadily. “It isn’t.” She took a shivering breath. “Is he… it doesn’t always go well. The brain…” She swallowed hard. “Is he… conscious? Aware?”

Natasha offered them a small, sad smile. “Fury didn’t want anyone to know until we knew. He put him in an environment with things just wrong enough to see if he would notice. He just broke out and took down half a dozen agents before running off into Time Square.”

The convoy of cars.

The urgency of it.

She rose, James with her, and said, “We need to see him.”

 

_________________________________________

 

Steve was being briefed on one of the upper levels by Fury.

Peggy couldn’t care less.

Natasha got them into the elevator, and she and James were gripping one another’s hands like a lifeline. She couldn’t think beyond seeing Steve again. She couldn’t think what it might mean for them both. What it might mean for Steve himself. 

James tightened his grip on her fingers as the elevator doors opened. “He’ll be okay,” he said, more for himself than anyone else. 

“He will,” she agreed. They would make sure of it.

It felt like they were walking for hours, even though it could only have been minutes. Fury’s door was suddenly in front of them and Natasha looked askance at them before swiping her identification. The door slid aside.

Peggy felt light-headed as they stepped into the office.

Fury was sitting at his desk, but Peggy’s eyes immediately went to the man on the other side.

She stumbled to a halt, and felt James’s hand under her elbow, steadying her.

“Steve,” she whispered.

He turned, and it was him. 

He was in a white t-shirt, as he had been when he emerged from Erskine’s rebirth chamber, broad and fair and striking. He was frowning, as if he was unhappy with whatever Fury had been saying, but when he saw them, she saw the emotions, so many emotions, wash across his face. He never was very good at hiding how he was feeling.

He was across the floor to them in four long strides, and he caught each of them by a shoulder, staring from one to the other. His hand rose to cup Peggy’s cheek, and the smile, the joy, that broke on his face made tears spring to her eyes.

Then he leaned down and kissed her, and what could she do but lean back into the man she had loved so long ago, and had never quite forgotten. Her left arm rose, wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer.

James’s grip on her hand was the thing to make her draw back, flushed, mortified. She looked at him, expecting anger, shock, anything but the quick, rueful smile that crossed his lips.

“You macking on my girl now, Rogers?” he said, his voice trembling.

Steve’s head swung towards him, and he stared at James. “Buck…?”

“It’s been a long time, Steve,” James said.

Before Steve could think to pull back, confused and uncertain, James wrapped his arm around Steve’s back and caught Peggy’s metal hand where it rested beneath Steve’s shoulder blade, and pulled Steve into a tight embrace, wrapped up between them.

 

__________________________________________________

 

Natasha drove them back to the apartment.

There were so many things that needed to be said, but none of them knew what to say. Steve was in the back seat of the humvee with James, while Peggy sat up front, staring straight ahead, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.

“The city’s changed a lot,” James said quietly.

“Yeah,” Steve murmured, looking out the window. 

They fell into awkward silence again, until the car pulled into the garage beneath the apartment building. Steve was the first one out of the vehicle, straightening up, looking around. Another Soldier, Peggy thought, watching him. The three of them, all weapons of some kind.

“Thank you, Agent,” Steve said when Natasha climbed out the car.

“Carter,” she said.

He looked askance at Peggy. 

“She’s Agent Carter,” Peggy murmured. “My daughter.”

It wasn’t how she imagined telling him. He turned back to Natasha, staring at her, then held out a hand to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realise.”

Natasha’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. “You’d be the first,” she said, grasping his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Captain.”

He grimaced. “I expect so,” he said.

“Only the good stuff,” James murmured.

Steve looked at him, emotions skimming across his face in rapid succession, then back at Natasha. “Agent Carter, I don’t mean to be rude, but if you don’t mind, I would like some time without supervision,” he said.

Natasha caught her mother’s eyes, Peggy could see the question there. 

“We’ll be fine from here,” she said. “You get back to Fury and let him know we’ll contact him if we need to.”

Natasha nodded curtly, climbing back into the car, and they waited until she was out of sight before James nodded to the doorway that led to the elevator. 

“This way.”

The elevator was silent all the way to the penthouse, and when the doors opened, James stepped aside to let Steve enter first.

“Make yourself at home, Steve.”

Steve nodded mutely, walking out into the opulent living room. The view was spectacular, all the walls made of glass along the east side of the room. He walked over to the windows, looking out. Peggy didn’t need to be told where he was looking.

“Come a long way, haven’t we?” James murmured, coming up alongside him. “Jesus, Steve, if we’d known you were still out there…”

“Fury said it’s 2012,” Steve said. “That I was under seventy years.”

Peggy curled her hands uncertainly. “I’ll make tea,” she said quietly. “I find it helps stave off the cold.”

Steve glanced back to look at her. “Peggy,” he said haltingly. “When I kissed you…”

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “Please don’t apologise for it,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I kissed you back.”

She heard one or both of them sigh as she filled the kettle.

“This doesn’t have to be weird,” James said. “I mean, weirder. By rights, all of us should be old or dead now. You don’t need to make a big deal about a kiss.”

“A big deal?” Steve sounded astonished. “Buck, aren’t you an item?”

Peggy had to turn to look at him then, a small, tired smile on her face. “We are,” she said, “but that doesn’t negate our fondness for you.” She tapped her metal fingertips on the edge of the counter, drawing his eye. “Steve, I spent nearly forty years being used as a weapon. I have done unspeakable things. Kissing a man I love is not one of them.”

Steve stared at her. He walked to the couch and sank down, pushing his fringe back from his brow. “Jesus,” he said quietly, shaking his head. He looked up. “What happened to you, Peggy? I thought you were dead.”

Her fingertips rattled on the counter again. “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” she said with a wry smile. “The same could be said for you.”

James sat down on the arm of the couch. “We’re a special club, Rogers,” he said. “The people who by rights should have been dead, but because of crazy scientists and experiments have ended up alive.”

Steve looked between them. “How long have you…” He hesitated. “I don’t even know what I need to ask here.”

Peggy met James’s eyes, nodded. She came over to the living area, sitting down on one of the chairs. “I broke my controls and came to New York in 1984,” she replied, folding her hands in her lap. “The ones who turned me into their drone underestimated the intensity of feeling maternity can create. I escaped them, came here, brought my child. James and Howard took me in, even though I was a dangerous liability. They protected me.”

“We never meant for anything to happen,” James added, swinging one leg back and forth like the tail of a cat, “but no one else had been through the things we’d been through: the war, what came after, being turned into something not quite human anymore.” He shrugged, one finger picking at the seam of his trousers. “It took a long time.”

Steve nodded. “What happened?” he asked, looking at Peggy. “To the ones who had you?”

Peggy turned over her metal hand. “They come out of the woodwork from time to time,” she said quietly. “I thought they would have died with the Soviet Union, but corruption remains. They came after Natasha only a couple of years ago, but have been laying low since.”

“Natasha?”

Peggy smiled slightly. “My little one,” she murmured. “They tried to kill her. I can only imagine that they resent losing their second generation weapon, and would prefer her dead to her current position.”

Steve looked down at his hands, then back at her. “Did they force the pregnancy on you?”

She kept her expression opaque. “I was a weapon, Steve,” she murmured. “They did whatever they liked with me. I don’t remember most of it. I didn’t need to. They took my memories, and left me as a device for their use.”

He looked stricken. “God, Peggy, if I’d known…”

“If any of us had,” she murmured. “Steve, it’s the past. It can’t be undone. I have a strong, beautiful, clever daughter who will surpass me by far. I choose to hold onto that, rather than think about where she began.”

Steve nodded, then looked up at James. “What about you, Buck? You’ve been here the whole time?”

“With Howard,” James replied. “He took me on. Kept me sane. Gave me a job to do.” He gestured around them. “All this, he did for his kid.” He shook his head with a rueful chuckle. “I never thought I’d end up halfway adopted by the family, but here we are.”

Steve studied him. “You look well,” he said. 

James snorted. “Fat,” he said. “I look fat.” He patted his belly. It was true he had put on a little weight, but it was nothing compared to some. “I think I’m hitting my middle-aged spread, finally. Only fifty years too late.”

Steve hesitated. “Zola?” he guessed.

“That’s what we figure,” James agreed. “I’m still stronger than I have any right to be, and you can see how much I’ve aged. Never really had any problems with my health. Guess I should be grateful to the little bastard.”

“Jesus,” Steve said again, faintly, shaking his head. 

“And look at you,” James said, forcing joviality into his voice. “Seventy years as a popsicle? Were you trying to one-up Carter or something?”

Steve raised his eyes to James. “I didn’t want to leave you behind,” he said, and Peggy could see the grief and guilt etched all over his face. Of course, it would be mere days, perhaps hours, to him, since he put the ship in the water. “But they were heading to New York.”

James just leaned down and squeezed his shoulder. “I know,” he said. “You did what you had to. You saved all those lives.” He managed a smile. “And hey, it’s been okay. I got picked up by a nice family, got better, even helped Howard trying to break the serum code.”

Steve tried to smile. “How did that go?”

“He looked like he fell on a pin cushion,” Peggy murmured. Steve’s eyes came back to her. “It was unsuccessful. Whatever they used on us was similar, but not the same. There were some unauthorised tests done, a few years ago. They ended… badly for the man involved.”

Steve sank back against the back of the couch, rubbing both hands over his face. 

James frowned in concern. “You need some rest?”

“I’ve been asleep for seventy years,” Steve shot back sharply, then winced, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m sorry, Buck. I just… it’s a lot to take in.” He looked up, and his eyes were too bright. Steve wasn’t one to cry. They both knew that. “Last thing I remember was the ice, and now…” He motioned helplessly with one hand. “Did we win? The war? Is that over?”

Peggy’s throat felt tight, knowing how close he had come to seeing the end of it. “Yes,” she said. That war was won. That was all he needed to know now. He didn’t need more. Not yet, not when he was so close to falling apart. 

His broad shoulders sagged, part relief, part exhaustion. “Well,” he said sadly, “that’s something.”


	7. April 2012

It was late, but the city was still illuminated as ever.

They had talked, but haltingly, and in the end, Steve agreed he was tired and should rest. It was a lie, but Peggy could understand the need for it. She had no idea what she could say to him to help matters, and James was treading the fine line too.

James took Steve to the best guest room they had, then informed her he was going to bed too.

He went to the room they shared sometimes. He didn’t close the door. That was his wordless invitation to her, she knew, but she also knew that tonight wasn’t a night she could slip into his arms and rest.

Sleep was likely to keep its distance.

Instead, she fetched all of her choice weapons from the safe and the various hiding places and laid them out one by one on a sheet of thick cloth on the table. There was something calming in taking each one apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again.

Most of them, she could manage with her eyes closed if she so wished.

Her hands moved of their own accord. They knew they shape of the weapons, the size, the pieces, the positions. Like prayer beads slipping through the fingers of a penitent, her weapons came apart and together again, the metal cool and smooth against her fingertips.

How long she sat there, she could not be certain, but the Soldier saw the faintest of movements reflected in the window in front of her.

She was on her feet, gun raised, in a split-second.

Steve was standing in the doorway.

The gun still pointed at him.

“Just like old times,” he said quietly.

She lowered the weapon, and turned back to lay it on the table. “Somewhat,” she said. She could recall a laboratory and weapons and a shining silver disc. There was a reason that a gun had recoiled in her hand that day. She could scarcely remember what it was. 

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. He hadn’t moved. 

She lined the guns up on the table. “I think I’ll make cocoa,” she said. Her voice sounded sharp and brittle in her own ears, and she didn’t want to imagine how it sounded to him. “You’ll be feeling quite chilled, I expect.”

He followed her across the open-plan living room to the kitchen. “How did you know?”

Peggy kept her face averted, going through the cupboards. “About what?”

“Earlier,” he said, “you said tea would stave off the cold. Now, you said I’d be feeling chilled.”

She set down the cocoa jar on the counter, laying her hands down on either side of it. “You aren’t the only one who spent some time in the ice,” she said finally. Her fingers curled and uncurled, metal matching flesh. “They were obliging enough to preserve me. Rather like a rack of pork.”

“Jesus, Peggy…”

She wet her lower lip, then turned and tried her best to smile. “It was quite some time ago,” she said. “No need to fuss.” She stepped around him to go to the refrigerator. “It’s just rather useful to remember now. I can help you at least.”

He was watching her. She didn’t have to look at the reflection in the metal surfaces of the kitchen appliances or the distant window. He was watching and he was upset, knowing what had happened to her, and that wasn’t going to help anyone.

She closed the door of the refrigerator. Her throat felt tight. 

“Please don’t,” she said, her metal hand too tight on the handle of the door. She forced her fingers apart, but she could already see where the metal was dented. 

“Don’t?”

“Don’t stare at me as if I’m some tragedian,” she said, drawing herself up and turning to meet his eyes. “Yes, terrible things happened, but lamenting about them won’t change anything.” She set the milk bottle down on the counter and reached up for a pan. “I’m alive. I have a strong, brilliant child, and I am safe and I am loved.”

“Peggy,” Steve’s voice was quiet. “Just stop for a second, would you?”

The pan clattered on the edge of the stove, and she took a shaking breath. “Very well,” she said, bracing her hands on the edge of the counter. “What now?”

He moved closer to her. “Look at me?”

He had to ask that, didn’t he? He had to bloody ask. 

She bit down on her lower lip, looking away from him, and tried to gather herself. It was better to be brave and strong for him. She always had been. She had always tried to be, in every part of her life.

“I’m not broken,” she said sharply. “I don’t need to be looked after.”

He hesitated, then touched her shoulder.

She flinched from him, swatting his hand away. “Please don’t,” she said, her voice shaking far more than she liked. 

“You’re upset,” he said.

She looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard. Her face felt like it wanted to crumple, and she could feel the burn in her throat that spoke of tears waiting to be shed. “Of course I’m upset,” she whispered. “You’ve come back, and I… we…” She took a shaking breath. “Steve, everything is different now. You may not be, but I am. I _am_.”

“I know.”

She looked down at her left hand. The metal gleamed. “I don’t think you do,” she said. She curled her fingers into a fist. “I was weaponised. I was programmed. I was unleashed.” She turned and made herself look him in the eyes. “I have killed a lot of people.”

He was keeping himself at arm’s length, but everything about his stance said he would move forward, comfort her at the first sign she wanted or needed it. “It wasn’t your choice,” he said. 

“It doesn’t mean I don’t regret that it happened,” she replied quietly. “When you knew me, I was… better than I am now. The person I was is gone. The person you might have…” She couldn’t hold his gaze and looked away. “I’m not her anymore, Steve.”

He moved a little closer. “You’re still Agent Peggy Carter,” he said, and his voice was as firm and resolute as she could remember it being. “You’re still one of the most stubborn, deadliest, most beautiful dames I ever met.”

The laugh was weak and unsteady and she looked up at him. “Dame?”

One side of his mouth turned up. “So you remember enough to be offended by that?” he said. He offered her his hand. “You’re still in there, Peggy, even if there’s more to you now.” She laid her flesh hand carefully in his. His fingers were cool, and squeezed hers gently. “We can start fresh,” he said. “Hey, ma’am. Steve Rogers.”

Her own smile came in response, unsteady and frail, but there. “Good evening, Mr Rogers,” she said, giving his hand a shake. “Margaret Carter. You may call me Peggy.”

“And I already met your punk of a boyfriend,” Steve added, though she could hear the way his voice caught on the word. She squeezed his hand and he gave her a brief, rueful smile. “Can’t say I blame you. Buck’s a great guy.”

“He helped me,” Peggy said, her fingers lacing between his. “When I came here, I had no notion of who I was, only that he and Howard were my allies. They took what was left of me, helped me piece it back together.” She looked down at their linked hands. “He had seen the very worst of what I am, and yet, he still loves me.”

“He does that,” Steve murmured. 

She looked back up at him. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have given you hopes that things could pick up where we left off.”

He lifted her hand between his. “Peggy,” he said, his tone completely serious, “where we left off, you fell off a train. I wouldn’t want to pick up there. I’d have to climb down that cliff, and you know I hate doing anything dangerous.”

To her surprised, she actually laughed. “I’ve missed you, Captain,” she said.

He smiled that small, quiet smile again. “For what it’s worth, I missed you too,” he said.

She took her hand back and set to making the cocoa. “Really? Those three whole days between one reckless mission and the next?”

He sat down on one of the stools by the breakfast bar. “Eight,” he said, “and that felt like long enough.”

She glanced back at him. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

“You were there because of me,” he said.

She poured the milk into the pan. “My, haven’t we sprouted an ego,” she said, though she could hardly deny it was true. She had joined Steve’s brigade because James was too unstable and too vulnerable to go after Zola. She had accompanied them, to watch Steve’s back, in James’s stead. “I heard that you caught him in the end. Zola. You know, that little man I was really after?”

“So that’s your type? Short, sickly, pasty guys?” The humour was forced, from both sides. They needed something that wasn’t the past seventy years of blankness or broken memories and nightmares and emotional scars. “No wonder you gave me a second look before.”

She stirred the milk slowly with a wooden spoon. She could remember that. There was a picture in the files Bucky showed her: Steve before the serum. Small, skinny, couldn’t even do a single push-up. She saw that picture and she remembered him more clearly than the shield and the uniform. That, James told her once, was always how he’d remember Steve too.

She didn’t know what she could say to him, not when the tiny, frail man he was spoke out from those broad shoulders and that grand height.

The cocoa powder turned the milk slowly brown, and she watched it swirling as she stirred.

“Peggy.”

She didn’t turn. “Yes.”

“Are you happy now?”

It was a simple question, but so complicated as well.

She didn’t reply at once, pouring the cocoa into two mugs. They were novelty ones, gifts from Natasha, who always felt that nothing said affection like an oversized mug proclaiming it in gaudy, colourful letters.

Steve accepted one of them from her, and she studied the contents for a moment, before looking up at him. “As near as I can be, I think,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She was on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, but it felt safer to remain there, a tangible barrier between them just for a moment.

He didn’t contradict her or even ask why she couldn’t be sure. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination, given all she had been through. He looked down into the cocoa too, and she could see the way he was gathering himself.

“Natasha will want to meet you,” she said finally.

“Your daughter,” he murmured. “She seems…”

“Stubborn? Determined? Proud? Fierce?”

He glanced up at her and one side of his mouth turned up. “I was going to say like you.”

Peggy’s smile returned, brief and wan. “You wouldn’t be wrong,” she said.

He wrapped his hands around the mug. “I look forward to meeting her properly, then.”

“Tomorrow,” Peggy said, then glanced at the clock and amended, “Later.”

He followed her look. “If you need to sleep…”

She curled her fingers around her mug. “To be honest,” she said, “at this moment, it doesn’t really feel like an option.”

He nodded, looking back down at the mug. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean.”


	8. April 2012 - Continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are several reasons for the delay in this chapter: getting published ([can haz book](http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/AuthorArcade/cb-lewis)! :D), writing more original stuff for submission, and being stuck at a very tricksy point in the plot of this one and no idea where I was going with it. Still, it's here now :)

The shower was steaming.

Peggy stood under the streaming water, both hands braced on the tiles of the wall in front of her.

She hadn’t slept more than half an hour the previous night, and the world was contracting to a familiar focus. She curled her fingers into fists, and bent her arms to bring herself forward and rest her head against them.

Steve had retreated to his room some two hours after their first cup of hot cocoa. She had remained in the living room, sitting at the table and unmaking and remaking her guns. She’d heard him gasp out, and knew it would be a nightmare.

It was strange, she’d thought, that being in ice made them so much more potent. Perhaps it was the brain’s way of processing everything. Perhaps, being all but turned off and rebooted by chemicals in the blood made the mind play tricks. She remembered all too well what her first waking nights had been like.

She’d considered going to him, waking him, comforting him.

In the end, she’d gone to James, touched his shoulder, and asked him to help.

The two men had talked quietly into the night, too low for her to hear in the other room, and the pieces of her guns slid between her fingers, cool and smooth as ice. When she finally laid her head down, she was alone in the bed, and sleep was a distant friend.

They were both sleeping when she went to the shower. 

The water ran hot, and the heat was comforting.

She had no idea how long she stood there, but when she finally stepped out, her fingers were as wrinkled as prunes. She towelled herself dry and pulled on her clothes on autopilot, her thoughts a thousand miles - and seventy years - away.

People were talking when she emerged from the bathroom, and she recognised both voices at once: Natasha and Steve.

They were both sitting at the table. Steve was stiff, his back straight and chin up, but Natasha was in her usual, casual slouch, watching Steve with guarded interest and suspicion, like a cat with an unexpectedly astute mouse. 

“Yes,” Steve was saying. “It’s a lot to take in.”

A clatter from the kitchen caught Peggy’s eye. James was at the stove, whipping up his special king-sized breakfast, if the empty cartons and multitude of pans were anything to judge by. 

“Hey, mom.”

Peggy looked back to her daughter. “You’re here early this morning, Natasha.”

Natasha smiled, pushing out the chair beside her. “I wanted to make sure everyone was playing nice.”

Peggy sat down in the vacant chair with a small, polite smile for Steve. “I don’t think any of us really know the meaning of the word.”

“Tell that to Captain Fantastic, here,” Natasha said with a knowing smirk at Steve. “You know they still say you’re like in the show reels.”

Steve snorted. “I bet.”

“Well, it’s not like they could say what Captain Dumbass was really like,” James said. He carried over two plates, setting one down in front of Natasha, and the other in front of Steve. “I mean, how are you meant to make a punk with the survival instinct of a lemming into a hero?”

Peggy couldn’t help smiling at both James’s words and the indignation on Steve’s face. “I would say that’s an accurate description,” she said.

“Not true,” Steve protested.

James coughed pointedly. “So the Valkyrie…”

Steve picked up his fork. “Point taken,” he said wryly. He offered Peggy a quick, tired smile, then looked back at Natasha. “I hope you don’t believe every story these two reprobates have told you about me.”

Natasha looked fondly between Peggy and James, as he sat down with plates for himself and Peggy. “Depends on the story,” she admitted. “Although I am curious: your first day out, did you really run the length of Brooklyn barefoot? Because these days, God knows what you could end up catching.”

“Right to the docks,” Steve said with a nod.

“And caught the man he was after,” Peggy murmured. “Always so bloody stubborn.”

Steve cut into his eggs. “Like you can talk.” He glanced over at James. “Is she still as bad?”

James nodded, his mouth already full. “Worse.”

Peggy held up her fork. “Not entirely my fault,” she said. “It seems I have a protective streak that makes me rather… ferociously determined.”

“She’s not kidding,” Natasha agreed. Her portion was smaller than any of the others, but she was still working her way through it with gusto. 

“You didn’t say why you came over,” Peggy said, a few moments later, when their plates were all but cleared. “I’m fairly sure it wasn’t for James’s cooking.”

“Hey!”

Natasha shot him a quick smile, but it faded. “No,” she agreed. “I’m here on business.” She looked back at Steve. “SHIELD were the ones to take you out of the ice, Captain, and they tried to do their tests to check your health while you were…”

“Defrosting?” Steve suggested dryly. “Or does that sound too much like a steak?”

Natasha waved a hand as if brushing away a fly. “Thawing, if you’d prefer,” she replied. “They still have records of your original blood samples, back in the day, and were trying to check if your base level was normal or if there was anything to be concerned about.”

Steve laid down his fork. “Let me guess. They’re worried.”

“It’s more a case that your blood wasn’t… reacting the same way as it did before,” she explained. She glanced at Peggy. “Mom, do you remember when you were in cryo, when they took you out, did they do anything to your blood?”

Peggy frowned, slowly shaking her head. “It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t recall. Dialysis or something like that?”

“Possibly,” Natasha confirmed. “Or maybe there was something they injected you with to ensure your blood flow was stimulated.” She looked back at Steve. “They want to take fresh samples, now that you’re upright and de-popsicled, just to be sure there isn’t anything even more irregular than usual.”

Steve picked his fork up again, jabbing at his eggs. “Guess some things don’t change.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Peggy murmured. “Howard did the same thing for me when I came to him. It helped him to help me. Perhaps this will do the same for you?”

Steve glanced at her, and she could see he was trying to find a way to ask, without stirring up unpleasant memories. In the end, he settled for nodding, and ducking back over his food, his head propped in his other hand.

He looked exhausted.

Peggy glanced at James, wondering if they ought to say something or do something.

Comforting and supporting others was still difficult, especially when her emotions were unbalanced already. The soldier wanted to protect what she still considered hers. They had used that, after all. They had weaponised her instinct to kill to protect what she loved. 

James must have recognised the look in her eyes.

He reached over the table and covered her metal hand with his. “Easy, Peg.”

That was when she looked down and saw the fork crumpled between her fingers.

She forced her fingers open, dropping the fork. “Excuse me.”

It felt like cowardice to run from the table, but if she could barely control herself while eating breakfast, she was going to be of no use to anyone. She strode through the apartment and went out onto the balcony on the north face, letting the breeze whip at her face.

Behind her, she heard the door slide open.

The light tread told her who was there.

“You okay, mom?”

Peggy leaned on the cool metal of the rail, arms folded. “Not especially.”

Natasha came to her side, slipping an arm around her waist, and rested her cheek against Peggy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Peggy nodded tightly.

“He’s still the same, huh?”

“Oh, very much so.” Peggy felt like she was standing at the end of a tunnel, shouting through it, trying to make herself heard. Natasha would understand, extrapolate her meaning from what she was leaving unsaid. “He hasn’t changed at all.”

Natasha rubbed her cheek against Peggy’s shoulder. “I didn’t think he could be the way you and uncle Buck said,” she confided, “but he is.”

“Yes.” Peggy’s eyes were burning and she blinked hard.

Natasha didn’t say anything. She just stayed there, cheek on Peggy’s shoulder, the wind tearing around them. Finally, ten minutes later, she shed her jacket and wrapped it around her mother’s shoulders. “You’ll catch a cold. Don’t stay out here too long.”

Peggy reached up and mutely patted the back of her daughter’s hand.

When the door slid closed behind her, Peggy lifted her hand to pull the coat closed around her. It still carried Natasha’s warmth, and the faint scent of her perfume. 

When everything else in her life was being pulled out from beneath her feet, her daughter was the one person whose love and loyalty she could count on without hesitation or doubt. 

Yes, James loved her, but the quiet, careful stability of their relationship had been irreparably changed by Steve’s arrival. It was like a landslide surging down on them, changing everything in its wake. A welcome landslide too. Of all the people to crash back into their lives, she knew both of them would not wish for anyone else.

That was the problem. 

She lifted her hand to brush the chilly tears from her cheeks.

Behind her, the door slid open again.

“Hey, Peg.”

She didn’t turn.

“James.”

He closed the door behind him and came closer to her, hands curling on her shoulders. “How you holding up?” She brought her hands up to clasp at his. Her throat felt too tight for words. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Me too.”

“I’m… happy,” she whispered. “I know I am, but…”

It felt cruel and useless to say she almost wished it hadn’t happened.

He kissed her hair. “I know, Peg. I know. We’re both happy, but it changes everything, and that…” He sighed. “We’ve had good years, haven’t we?”

She leaned back into him, nodding. “And more to come?” It came out more plea than statement.

He wrapped his arms around her, and sighed, soft and low against her ear. “God, I hope so.” He nuzzled her hair. “We’ll work through it. We just have to… move the pieces around. Make room for Steve again. He’s back and we’re not losing him again. Even if he tries to do that goddamned noble-sacrifice and greater-good crap on us. He’s ours and he’s staying with us.”

“Yes. Ours.” She took a deep breath. “Is he inside still?”

James shook his head. “Tasha figured it would be better to give us both some space just now. Steve agreed. He’s headed down to SHIELD with her.”

She squeezed his wrist. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?”

He nodded, hugging her close. “We got this far. This is just a complication. A good one, but still…” He sighed again, quietly. “We’ll get there. All of us.”

When he said it, she could almost believe it.


	9. Unexpected Developments

Every gun in the apartment was gleaming.

James knew what she needed. He had silently brought out his own weapons and laid them on the table beside her. It showed a great deal of trust, letting someone else tend your weapons. He had never touched hers, but she knew she would let him if she needed to.

They were less familiar than her own weapons of choice, but she knew them well enough to dismantle them, clean them and piece them back together one at a time.

She was still working on them when there was a chime from the security feed.

The Soldier’s hands froze where they were.

“Tony,” James called over from the kitchen. He was putting together a roast dinner, a luxury for Steve given the time he had come from. “Remember?”

Peggy resumed her task, putting together the final gun. Yes. Tony. He had not intruded on them the night before, which showed a surprising amount of tact for him, but neither of them had been surprised when he said he would swing by as soon as he could that morning.

He let himself in a few moments later.

“So, where is he?”

Peggy pressed her lips together. Her hands were twitching.

“Tasha took him back to SHIELD,” James said. His voice sounded as tense as she felt. “He- they had checks they needed to do.”

“Hm.” Tony’s footsteps approached Peggy at the table. He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “Brought you something, aunt Peg.”

She jerked her head in a nod. It felt… difficult to formulate words, when all she wanted to do was break something into a thousand pieces.

A section of a machine was set on the thick canvas in front of her. It was old, dirty, a mess of wires, bolts and gears set into dense casing. She stared at it, then turned her head to look up at Tony, who gave her a tired half-smile.

“Figured you’d need to keep your hands busy,” he said. “I need that, and two more like it, taken apart and cleaned out to see if I can work with it.”

A lump rose in her throat. Tony had hundreds of machines more than capable of doing what he needed done, but he had realised how much emotional turmoil Steve’s return would have caused her. Silently, she rose, and wrapped her arms around him. Tony pressed his cheek to her hair, patting her between the shoulders.

“Got your back, aunt Peg,” he whispered.

It was strange, she thought blankly as she started to sob, that such a simple kindness could be the thing to shatter the dam.

She heard Tony yelling in panic, patting her hair and her shoulders. He wasn’t made for such responses, especially not from her. 

She knew she could stop if she wished, but she didn’t want to. 

She wanted to drown in it. 

To feel, feel all the grief for the love she had felt, the man she had treasured and lost, the promises they had made a lifetime ago. Stolen kisses, secret caresses, an illicit affair hidden under the noses of the high command.

James gently pried Tony from her grip and took his place. She sank her face into the curve of his neck, taking comfort from the familiar warmth and scent of him. He had known the secret. All of the 107th had. He had known and now, he understood, and she knew - she _knew_ \- she was breaking his heart.

James half-led, half-carried her over to the couch. He didn’t try and say anything. There was nothing he could have said in that moment that could have helped. He just held her, combing his fingers through her hair, kissing her brow, smoothing the tears from her cheeks, and she loved him so much, she wanted to break apart to keep from hurting him.

It wasn’t fair. 

They had already been through so much, all of them. Why did their world have to be turned upside down by the one event that should have been happy? Why did it have to be now? Why, why, why wouldn’t it make sense?

Tony was babbling. Apologies. Suggestions. Offers of a trip somewhere far away so she could relax and everything would be okay again. More machines. Would more machines help? He had a lot of them. He could go and clear out his basement if she wanted.

“It’s okay,” James said quietly. Peggy couldn’t find words, faint sharp sounds catching in her throat, not quite sobs, but not speech, not by a long shot. “It wasn’t anything you did, Tone. It- this has been a long time coming.” James’s sigh ruffled her hair. “That’s what happens when the first love of your life walks back through the door.”

Tony was so still and silent. It was unnatural. Peggy turned her head enough to look at him. He looked stricken. “You always said,” he began, then shook his head. “I didn’t realise it-” He ran over to the couch, crouching down and resting his hands on Peggy’s thighs, like he had when he was so much younger. “It was the old days. I didn’t think it… you weren’t…”

“No,” she agreed, and for once, she sounded her age, frail and shaking. 

“Tony,” James’s voice was tired and flat. “It might have been the old days, but we were young once. We were only human.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t think.” He looked at her with so much pity and worry that she had to crush down another flood of emotion. “I’m sorry, aunt Peg. This has to suck.”

She could only nod, reaching out with one hand to pat his cheek. Even that felt like it was sapping her energy, and she curled back into James’s embrace. Tony rose, said something indistinct to James, then he was gone and they were alone again.

“You remember.” James said. His fingertips were brushing the back of her neck.

She nodded. It wasn’t something she could deny, not when he had been there, Steve’s shadow and guardian. He had kept their secret for them, as if it was his own. “It was a long time ago,” she whispered. “I- we can’t go back. We’ve all changed too much.”

“He hasn’t.”

She shook her head, lifting her eyes to his. “I know he’s ours, but-” She faltered. “James, I love you now.”

“But you still love him.”

There was no point in denying it.

She wrapped her arms around him and let him resume stroking his fingers through her hair. It was comforting. It was safe. 

His chest was rising and falling against her ear, and she heard the hitch in his breathing, the sign he had something to say, but was hesitating. 

Before she could ask what he was thinking, the cell in his pocket buzzed.

He tilted the screen so she could see the message. It was from Tasha. They were needed at SHIELD headquarters. Fury needed to see them.

She could not recall the journey from their home to SHIELD. Under any other circumstance, that lapse in attention would have alarmed her, but she was drained, tired. She felt... human for once, not a weapon, not the Soldier. Just a woman. The woman she had been before.

They must have gone in a cab, because James's hand was warm around hers for the full duration of the journey. He had been her anchor and support for so many years, and now... now, she didn't know how they were meant to proceed.

Natasha was waiting for them in the lobby.

"What's this about?" James asked.

Natasha shook her head, her eyes on her mother. "He didn't say." She stepped closer, taking Peggy's other hand. The warmth of her skin registered on the sensors, but so did the rapid, anxious beat of her heart. She didn't look uneasy, but Peggy knew her little girl was very good at what she did.

"We're all right," she tried to lie.

Natasha just hugged her. "Come on," she murmured. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can go home and have ice cream."

It came as no surprise that Steve was waiting for them in Fury's office. He took one look at her, and she saw the way his whole body tensed. He had always known when she was upset, just like James. They both knew her so well.

Silently, she disengaged from James and sat down on the couch, clasping her right hand around the cool metal of her left. James sat down by her, not touching, but close enough she knew she could reach out if needed.

Steve sat on her other side, a diplomatic amount of space between them.

Peggy swallowed hard, and forced her attention up to Fury. He was almost impossible to get a read on, but she had known him for a long time, and for all that he was trying to maintain a neutral expression, he looked concerned. 

"What's going on?" There was no point wasting time on niceties.

Fury sat down across the table. "We've been doing tests on the Captain's blood," he said.

Something was wrong with Steve. Something had to be wrong for all of them to be called in. Her hand moved without conscious thought, and all at once, she was holding onto Steve's, his fingers clutched between her metal ones.

"Is he all right?" James asked.

Fury ran a hand over his mouth. He brought his hand down to wrap around the other, and examined them for a moment. "Captain Rogers is in peak health," he said, raising his eye to them. "But during the checks, a flag was raised." He turned to Tasha, who was standing behind James, her arms folded. "Natasha's blood sample."

Peggy felt like she was back in the chamber, the cold flooding her senses, her body going numb. She tried to turn, tried to move, but everything felt like it was slowing down around her. 

"What?" Natasha sounded wary. "What is it? What did you find?"

Fury looked from Tasha back to Peggy, then on to Steve. "A DNA match with Steve Rogers."

None of them spoke.

Peggy could feel Steve's hand shaking against hers.

Fury continued quietly, "It's not your standard combination of two people, but it looks like they must have got hold of some of your blood, Captain. We knew for a long time that they had tried to engineer a perfect weapon in Carter's daughter. We didn't realise they'd used your blood to do it."

"How is that even possible?" Natasha sounded shaken. "I'm not- I don't understand."

"Neither do we," Fury looked up at her. "Genetic splicing, some kind of biological engineering. God knows."

Peggy felt cold down to the bone. Cold and old and brittle. Steve's child. She didn't imagine they could have done anything worse than all they had done to her, but they had made her an incubator for a genetic weapon made out of pieces of her and her dead lover. If she hadn't escaped, if she hadn't protected that baby with her life... 

"Peg," Steve sounded as numb as she felt. "Peggy..."

James's hand brushed her shoulder, but comfort, tenderness was not what she needed.

She rose stiffly and circled the end of the couch. Natasha was ashen. She lifted her hands to her daughter's face, her little girl. Words wouldn't come. She gently tilted Natasha's head down and kissed her brow, hoping Tasha would understand that the coming eruption was not - was never - her fault.

Natasha's tears were hot against her palms. "I love you, mom," she whispered.

Peggy could only nod, then she stepped back and walked from the room. 

She didn't know where she was going. She only knew she needed to be out, somewhere else, breathing, gathering up more pieces of her stolen life and trying to put them back together. New pieces. Pieces she had never known were pieces. Jagged and sharp and cutting her open all over again.

The halls were long and white and sterile. Empty.

Fury's foresight.

No one wanted to cross paths with an angry Soldier.

But the Soldier wasn't the one walking the halls. The Soldier was closed up in that box they had tried to keep her in. The Soldier wasn't the one who wanted to scream and rage and find every person who had chained her down and destroyed the one unsullied thing she had left, taking that love and those dreams of a happy future, and turning them into a weapon. She wanted to find them and she wanted to hurt them, to break them open and make them bleed.

She loved Natasha. She loved Natasha more than she could even comprehend. 

But if she hadn't, if she had let them close her up again and let them take that precious little pink creature, if, if, if...

Her fist connected with the window. The skin split across her knuckles from the force of it, and pain blazed down her arm. She changed hands and punched again, punching until the glass splintered, punching until chips and shards were tinkling and crackling and bouncing at her feet.

Behind her, she heard someone approaching. The reflection in the glass was distorted, but she could see enough. 

Not Fury. 

Not James. 

Steve.

Steve was standing behind her.

She couldn't tell if it was helping or making it worse to know that.

She wrenched her hand from the window, cool air whistling through the hole she left behind hand. "Tasha?" she asked hoarsely. 

"Bucky's looking after her." He came a step closer. He wanted to speak, and she knew what he was going to try and say. He would blame himself: for her fall, for her capture, for her - their - child being weaponised.

"Don't."

"Don't?"

"Don't say you're sorry." Her breathing was coming hard in her chest, and she could feel blood dripping down the fingers of her right hand. "They..." She couldn't grasp at the words. Words were difficult. Words were not enough to explain, to say anything. 

He moved closer, taking his time, giving her every second to pull away, his cracked reflection moving slowly, as if she were a skittish animal that might lash out and run. She might have, once, but she was so tired now, so tired.

His hands came to rest on her shoulders, so lightly. "I told you we'd make a beautiful kid."

Peggy's throat closed up tight, her eyes burning. He had. So long ago. They had lain together in a hollow, not far from the rest of the camp. He'd traced a fingertip down her nose. She had laughed, punched him in that broad chest of his, and told him he was a sentimental idiot. 

But he was right.

Dear God, he was right, and she had never known.

Her little girl with her stubborn, fierce expression. Her little girl who would never back down from a fight, and would use her diminutive size as a weapon. Her little girl with her father's brilliant blue eyes and a habit of brushing her hair back from her brow when exasperated. Her little girl with that mischievous half-smile that was wholly Steve's.

She had never seen it, because she had never believed it was possible. Steve's child. A ghost. A daydream. An impossible miracle that would never happen, but it had. It had, and that child had saved her. Their daughter had saved her life simply by being born.

Her hands shook as she lifted them to cover Steve's on her shoulders. She was the one to pull his arms around her. She was the one to lean back in wordless invitation, and only when she did, did Steve step close and hug her as tightly as he had so many years before.


End file.
